scope of human reason, and the instincts and principles of our nature, that a few tinsel beads, and burnished trinkets, should form a just purchase money for the state of Pennsylvania ?—But even that frail tenure was nominal, until the acquisition had been sealed by the blood of those proprietors, the hapless Indians, whose tenure was the gift of God, consecrated by the fiat, the sacred fiat, and the bleeding necessities of nature. Nation after nation of defenceless Indians must be immolated, before even the gift of the king was worth a groat. Yet this is the foundation of most of our inequality of fortune-this, and the public funded debt.

Of a character even more unjust is the funded debt of this perverted country, and its abused institutions. The funding of the poor soldier's pay, earned during the horrible trials of our revolution, could scarcely have been expected to contribute to the detriment of labour, and erect customs, privileges, and classes, subversive of liberty. Yet so it proved. Did it go to the poor veteran-his helpless widow-his shivering orphans? No! It was diverted from its pure channel by the patrician officers, and greedy capitalists, and hungry speculators of the army, and of the government. It was adopted with a full knowledge that it never could reach the soldier, but must immediately go to form a monied aristocracy; and the funded debt was created by those immediately interested in its creation-by those who had bought up the soldier's certificates for a song! Here then, we behold the origin of the landed and funded wealth of this country; of what we denominate capital! What labour or industry, could ever come in competition with such enemies? The land in fee simple to those who never, perhaps, saw it; and the funded debt to those who never paid for it, in sums too enor

mous for industry to equal, and too tempting either for the practice of virtue, the observance of justice, or even the abstinence from oppression. Here we have a double burden upon industry-a ground rent to the proprietor for ever, by the labourer; and a tax, or duty, to pay the stockholder his interest, paid by every working man, from the time of the Revolution to the present day. And yet we are told, and gravely told, that capital is the best friend of industry; and that capitalists, merchants, stockholders, gentlemen and lottery brokers, produce their portion of the wealth of the nation-always giving a due share of credit to those highly meritorious characters, beggars and misers! And yet these latter characters are made by the operation of the corrective principle of vicissitudes-by the spending of the prodigals, and the economy of the beggars. This system of social economy, I must confess, appears to me not less a strange one, than it is utterly inconsistent with the spirit of the age, and repugnant to the dictates of a liberal and unaffected philanthropy.

In ancient times, when government was more a matter of chance than of science, and the rights of man were either imperfectly conceived, or never distinctly defined-it became a sort of obligation, imposed by filial reverence and piety, as well as (in some measure) of necessity, that an emigrating people, when settling new countries, should carry with them the rites, customs, and institutions of their forefathers—thus making the infant colony a fac simile resemblance of the mother country. This was the case with the Trojans, the Phrygians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Saxons, and most, or all of the nations which have preceded us in existence;-nor, would it perhaps have conduced to their happiness, under those circumstances of contigui

ty, which made them such near neighbours, had they attempted new and untried systems. No parallel, therefore, can be found on the page of history, to the peculiar settlement of the United States. Our origin was sui generis. Severed by a boundless ocean from the nations of the old world-rising into existence in a new age, when government was a voluntary compact, and polity reduced to a science; we had every opportunity to cast off the gothic trammels of the antiquated kingdoms of Europe. But like all other people, we came from Europe fettered by the prejudices of education, the fond recollections of early life, the deep impressions of filial piety, and the instinctive desire to tread in the steps, and adopt the customs of our sires. Discoveries made under the flag of the king, invested the right of dominion in the royal person;—and the character of the monarch defined and conferred the title of the first settlers, who thus representing the radiations of royalty, brought to a new country, stupendous, grand, and fresh in all its features-the little and grovelling systems of imbecile and degenerate Europe, utterly repugnant to that sublime scale of creation, which they beheld surrounding them on all sides, and which they soon felt, was calculated to infuse into the mind of man, ideas of grandeur, happiness, and independence, totally incompatible with the worn-out.customs adapted to the emaciated and shrunken forms of the old world. To breathe the atmosphere of America, gave a new elevation of sentiment to the European emigrant-it inspired his mind with novel and bolder ideas; it dilated his trunk to greater vigour; it excited his heart to conceptions of heroism, and schemes of magnificence. Independence was written upon every spot that attracted his eye. Within the scant settle

ments of the royal provinces, a feeble glimmer of the old monarchy might still be seen, and the trappings of law and civilization occupied a narrow circle; but no man was bound to observe the limits, and all might pass them, whenever enterprise, heroism, or discontent, excited him to plunge into a new region, where the untamed grandeur of nature invited him to become himself the monarch of the woods; the only flaw in his title, the precariousness of his life; and the only disputer of his crown, the fierce Indian, whom the dread of famine drove to slay the invader. But the naked and feeble savage presented no serious barrier to the onward march of European warfare, and civilized weapons. Every breeze invited man to burst from the indistinct boundaries of law and civilization, to take up his mansion in the wild mountain, or the noiseless valley, where all traces of monarch, of law, and of obedience, were soon obliterated from the mind. There is something in the sacred wildness, and deep-toned solitude of the woods, that kindles a spirit of independence in the heart which scorns the power of kings, and revolts from all rule save that of reason. This spirit became more bold and fierce, with every accession of population, with each extension of our settlements, until the voice of royalty was lost in the murmurs of our forests, and the thunder of our cataracts. An authority weakened by a distance of three thousand miles of ocean, could excite no fear; and a power claimed and exercised in virtue of hereditary right, could exact no obedience, and excite no respect, from a people, who beheld around them infallible evidence that all men were equal, and that reason and justice only were the laws of nature. soon, therefore, as the first generation that had emigrated had passed away, and with them the shackles

As

and prejudices of education had fallen off, the American Revolution commenced; not immediately in acts of oppugnation, or deeds of violence and bloodshed; but in the more rational and dignified investigation of the tenure of royal power, and the injustice of coercive government, without the ingredients of voluntary compact, or express representation. Having established this equality of rights, and necessity of representation, the war of the Revolution commenced; and finally eventuated in the recogniton of the principles contended for; that all have equal rights, and that the delegated mass of those rights, by compact, forms the only just and free government.

The object gained was sublime and magnificent in the highest degree. But it is the weakness of human reason, to relax its vigour, the moment it has acquired a conquest. The very hour we established the principle of equality, and the fact of nominal political independence, we submitted to all the forms, usages, and trappings of the old gothic monarchies, whose deformity we detested, and whose oppressions we had cast off. The contradiction, however astonishing it may appear to us, did not seem to be perceived by the worthies of 1776; whose attention was entirely engrossed by magnanimous ideas of augmented friendship with those nations, whose notions of government and claims of power we had just exploded, in the best blood of our bravest sons. Thus, what we gained in principle, we lost in practice; and opened our arms wide to receive the laws, customs, manners, fashions, morals, literature, arts, science, and manufactures of our defeated enemy. In doing this, we voluntarily became dependent in fact, while we proclaimed ourselves to be independent in theory: and in virtue of the theory, we became reconcil