revoking the right of representation ; because these parties
freely give him the money of the nation for a good share of
it. The poverty of the English nobility, compared with its
wealth before the abolition of perpetuities, has exposed the
house of Lords to the full effect of the modern modes for
guiding the house of Commons. Can we more clearly discern Mr. Adams's idea of a beautiful balance of orders in
England, either in the original feudal parliamentary constitution, or in its existing modification, than we can Dr.
Henry's, of a beautiful English constitution somewhere hidden, in a short, frivolous and dead code of civil laws. called
magna charta? If this is a just picture of the English government, with what reason has Mr. Adams eulogized it?
With what reason has Publius or the Federalist, assigned
to it the rank among governments, which Homer bears
among poets? And with what reason are politicians introducing parties of interest, the present poison of that, into
our form of government?
Let us count the cost of the modern English system to that nation, to place before our eyes what the same system will cost here. It draws from the nation into its unappeasable avarice, not less than one hundred millions of pounds sterling annually. If the English king was to ask the nation for one third of its lands only, the dullest man would see that despotick power must grow out of such excessive wealth; but an annual receipt by himself and the parties of interest leagued to the crown, of more than the rent-roll of the whole, has hidden the despotism in an aggravated degree, under the various covers these parties of interest are bribed to throw over it. England and Scotland contain about fifty millions of acres of land. It is probable that an average rent of twenty shillings an acre would exceed its value, and certain, that double this rent would do so. Legislation, exercising a power of distributing wealth, has then in England already disposed of all the land of the kingdom, or its income. In the United States, the same system has not yet ripened into equal maturity. But such
