earth has been unable to equal, ought to be measured by
their envy; and when this envy shall cease, no reason for
our gratitude will exist. His apprehension glances at its
termination, but he has contracted a great idea, after he
had almost compassed it, down to nothing, by the epithet
"mercantile." Knowing that guile and venality led the
way to despotism, but seeing none established by our political laws, he turned his eye towards the mercantile, and
overlooked the capacity of civil law to issue it in copious
streams. The mercantile, concealed like guilt in the breast
of an individual, bears no resemblance to the political, published like justice in the face of the statute book. One
never destroyed a free government; the other never failed
to do it, unless the nation destroyed that. When the English
clergy owned 28,115 knights' fees out of 60,215 into which
the whole kingdom was divided, the guile and venality of
this party of interest, made it the pest and the tyrant of the
country for five centuries. If our exports amount to
$10,000,000, twenty of which are expended in taxes and
the sustenance of labour, and the banks have already gotten
a moiety of the remaining twenty, they have outstript the
monks in availing themselves of the civil law mode of
growing rich. The clerical party of interest contended
successfully for a long time, that to tax it was wicked; the
banking has successfully advanced the same doctrine. The
clerical intrigued with kings and beneficed the sons of no-
bies, to obtain the support of the government; the banking
bribes governments, and infuses stock into agriculture.
The clerical pretended to bestow heaven on the laity; and
the banking pretends to bestow wealth on labour.
The republican principle of general or publick interest, cannot be successfully assailed by the mercantile guile and venality of individuals. But the guile and venality emitted by civil law in the shape of a party of interest, endeavours, by every expedient, to cut up the general interest, for the sake of its own safety or aggrandizement; and soars above little individual frauds in the sunshine of legislative favour
