tled system of government, beyond the chance of alteration, and exalted by the sound sense and virtuous patriotism of the country, above the fluctuations of faction, and the sinister designs of reckless and ambitious demagogues.

Any community may become diseased by ideas of their own creation. The South has conjured up the phantom of oppression; of unequal burdens, and taxation levied upon them, for the exclusive benefit and bounty of the manufactures of the north! But where can be seen the dreadful realities of these imaginings? Why indulge in fictitious evils? why attempt to force the mind to the impression of wrongs endured, and injustice inflicted, when no principle of equity has been infringed; and no practical evil has resulted from the tariff, or can or will result? We forbear to push an investigation into the motives of such an unfair perversion of facts and principles; but we may be permitted to hope, that it has not for its basis any prurient feeling of ambition, or lust of office; and that misdirected patriotism, not pernicious faction, lies at the bottom of an infatuation, so strange and unaccountable.

I have said that the tariff infringes no principle of equity; by which I mean constitutional justice: but as this has been made a strong hold by the opponents of the American system, I shall defer its examination to a future occasion, when I shall canvass the question in

extenso.

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CHAPTER XXIII.

Debtor and Creditor.

THIS is one of the peculiar relations, growing out of the credit system, but more especially, the practice of banking, and usury. Mere commerce would not necessarily give rise to this relation between buyer and seller. It is a necessary consequence of credit, paper money, public funds, and the other concomitants of an age, whose wealth is a fiction, and whose justice is a legalized fraud.

The order of debtor and creditor, is the last fiscal shape, which property assumes in its passage to accumulation on one hand, and beggary on the other. They represent patricians and plebeians, or, capitalists and producers, masters and slaves, Spartans and helots. Or, we may go still further, and say, that debtor and creditor is but the relation of the idle to the industrious.

It must be too striking to escape the most casual observer, that debtors are found universally to be those who labour, and creditors, those who live in idleness on their wealth. Singular, indeed, is the civilized destiny of man, that those who produce all the wealth, are for ever among the poor; and those who produce nothing, are ever affluent, luxurious, and enervated, living upon the toil of those whom they doom to penury.

Such is the consequence of a perverted state of society, the adoption of wrong principles for the dis

tribution of labour, the monopoly of labour by charters, and the creation of capital by paper credits.

The first effect of the paper system, is to stimulate trade to the utmost height of competition. Hence, the universal diffusion of unrestricted credit, and the consequent multiplication of debtor and creditor. The temptation to purchase on credit, is known to be irresistible, without reference in either party, to the ability to make payment, the creditor being satisfied with the coercion of law, and the debtor content to accept of value, without the payment of an equivalent; referring to time and accident, for the chances of an escape from the legal penalty.

The relation of debtor and creditor, therefore, being purely factitious, wholly unknown to man in a state of nature, or even in the most civilized stages of existence, where paper credits are not current, we must consider it as a creature of law, whose properties are decided, not by justice, but by power.

We have seen that justice decrees labour to its producer, but that law distributes it on the principle of capital, and monopoly. By the intervention of credit, the original principle of acquiring property is opened to the producer, who is the poor, and the debtor; for credit, is nothing more than CAPITAL, opening her hands, and permitting industry to take from them at her pleasure. No sooner, however, has this door to acquisition been opened, than capital, whose temptation to this act of liberality, was the lure of interest and usury, again closes her hands, and demands the reimbursement of capitalist and interest. Here commences the collision between poverty and capital, in which the former is helpless, if unable to pay, and the latter, a tyrant, fortified by law, in all the terrors of despot

ism. It is obvious, that if the principle of equity in the distribution of property prevailed, there could exist no motive for monopoly and capital to resort to the expedient of CREDIT; and industry, already possessed of all her rights, and all her comforts, could have no inducement to borrow, at so great a sacrifice as the interest produces. The relation of debtor and creditor, therefore, is produced by the rapacity of capital to accumulate, and on the side of the borrower, by the necessities and temptations of poverty, superinduced by wrong principles, in the distribution of labour. What right, then, has capital to punish by imprisonment for debt? and extort, from injured industry, for inability to comply with a contract purely of her own making? for it is capital that lends, it is capital that is master; and commands and controls the servant industry. It has no right, but what power confers, and the entire system of credit, being a fraud on labour, as the existence of capital is a fraud in its distribution, and the interest imposed a tax, levied by the idle on the labouring ; there exists no moral, or equitable obligation, to observe and fulfil conditions, fo which capital only is a free agent, because a supreme master. And this want of obligation to pay, on the part of the debtor, is proved by the fact of inability. He does not pay. He has no power to pay, he has no more volition to pay than he had to borrow, for, however he may will payment, wanting the equivalents, he never can carry his will into execution. It is absurd to maintain obligation, without free will to perform it. But capital insists that this obligation is complete and imperative; the law declares the absurdity, and on the ground of this absurdity, invests the creditor with power over the PERSON, the BODY, and consequently the LIFe of

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the debtor, who in vain pleads the will to pay, but appeals to God to show that he has no ability to second his will. In this manner, the perversion of the first principle in the distribution of labour, gives rise to all the misery that infests the social system. The body of the debtor becoming the property of the creditor, he is doomed to the dungeon of the felon, and the law allows bread and water. His children and wife become inmates of the alms house, and when at last the vengeance of capital is satiated, for its disappointment in adding to its hoards, the wretched victim is dragged from his damp vault to the little better habitation of the poor house, or becomes, from wounded pride, and conscious degradation, one of the many slaves to intemperance, that capital ordains shall surround her palace, and present living commentaries on her mercy, beneficence, and grandeur.

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But here capital and law have usurped a power, contrary to the natural laws of labour, as well as repugnant to the principles of the American Declaration of Independence. On this subject we shall be more diffuse in the subsequent chapter.

How far the relation of debtor and creditor can be perfected, by law imposing an obligation which cannot be fulfilled, or how far that relation is impaired and weakened by the same cause, are questions not less interesting than important. That laws, which give the body of the debtor to the creditor, tend more to annul the obligation of debt, than to enforce it, seems evident, from the history of this portion of our politico-economical system. Law cannot create impossibilities, it cannot make all men honest, nor render all men solvent; and until it can accomplish this, it but relaxes or destroys the bonds of honour that bind