exhibited so dazzling a degree of success in the legislative
mode of becoming rich, that all the objections against thorn
as a mode of poisoning our policy, disappeared; and our
legislatures suddenly became staples for manufacturing
anew the political wares broken to pieces by the revolution.
If the English nation, at the accession of William of Orange,
had restored to the crown the fraudulent prerogatives, for
exercising which Charles bled and James was expelled, our
legislatures would have had a precedent for reviving the
monarchical policy of welding aristocracies of interest to
our new government in a thousand forms, by legal distributions of wealth at the publick expense. Privileges and
monopolies, flowing from law, are of the same nature as if
they came from prerogative, like the same poison poured
from different phials. The English declaration of rights
at the revolution, does not more explicitly condemn the oppressions it corrects, than our state constitutions condemn
the principle of creating aristocracies by legal privileges.
This declaration is the most explicit acquisition obtained
by that nation at the expense of much civil war, in favour
of civil liberty, but its benefits have been defeated by making the statute book a receptacle for the same frauds which
were formerly recorded in the archives of prerogative. An
hundred laws to create an hundred aristocracies of interest, if they collect as much money, are the same to a nation, as an hundred of queen Elizabeth's monopoly grants. These laws require armies and penalties to defend them, live in the United States upon agriculture, and fear a militia.
No government ever commenced its operations with so pliable a people, as that of the United States. Among their most firmly rooted principles, were an aversion for legal privileges, aristocracies of interest and standing armies; and an affection for agriculture, commerce and the militia. By considering the effects of legal patronage upon the first triumvirate, and the effects of withholding it from the second, its force upon national policy, and its capacity to produce one evil as a cause for another, will be seen. A mili-
