distributed, is for ever resisting similar legal frauds against
its rights. Nature, by refusing to transmit talents or industry from father to son, frowns both upon hereditary
forms of government, and equalising and accumulating
laws. The first are the least adverse to her decrees. Individuals of fine qualities may be selected with whom to
commence monarchies or aristocracies, and accident or education may possibly cause some succession of these qualities, however certainly fools or tyrants will turn up at last.
But laws for enriching, in their commencement and throughout their operation, are regardless of merit; and the equalizing theory pretends both to keep property equal among
evanescent beings, and to supersede mental inequalities.
The ability of industry to divide property sufficiently to
destroy political combinations, was demonstrated in England
by the contrivance of the king and the judges, for letting
her loose upon entails; and the ability of accumulating
laws to destroy this wholesome operation, was subsequently
demonstrated, by letting loose funding and banking laws
upon industry. The idle, who seek for wealth by chartering laws, are wiser than their equalising brethren. Law
has never been able to produce an equality of property,
where industry exists; but it can produce its monopoly.
Our policy rejects its application to both objects, and our
constitutions unequivocally disclose an opinion, that civil
liberty depends upon leaving the distribution of property to
industry; hence laws for this end, are as unconstitutional, as
those for re-establishing king, lords and commons. Legal
wealth and hereditary power, are twin principles. These
frauds beget all the parties or factions of civil society, such
as patrician and plebeian, military and civil, stock and
landed. The enmity and contrast in all these cases, arise
from a legal difference of interest, and the active and passive members in this fraudulent system, are distinctly designated by the wealth and poverty it diffuses. In England,
where it prevails. "every seventh person draws support
from the parish at some period of his life, exclusive of
Page:Inquiry into the Principles and Policy of the Government of the United States.djvu/646
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634
THE LEGAL POLICY OF THE U. STATES.
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