Experience is with me, and, I believe,
the best opinions also. To keep a balance between the power of
acquisition on the part of the subject and the demands he is to answer
on the part of the state is the fundamental part of the skill of a true
politician. The means of acquisition are prior in time and in
arrangement. Good order is the foundation of all good things. To be
enabled to acquire, the people, without being servile, must be tractable
and obedient. The magistrate must have his reverence, the laws their
authority. The body of the people must not find the principles of
natural subordination by art rooted out of their minds. They must
respect that property of which they cannot partake. They must labor to
obtain what by labor can be obtained; and when they find, as they
commonly do, the success disproportioned to the endeavor, they must be
taught their consolation in the final proportions of eternal justice. Of
this consolation whoever deprives them deadens their industry, and
strikes at the root of all acquisition as of all conservation. He that
does this is the cruel oppressor, the merciless enemy of the poor and
wretched; at the same time that by his wicked speculations he exposes
the fruits of successful industry and the accumulations of fortune to
the plunder of the negligent, the disappointed, and the unprosperous.
Too many of the financiers by profession are apt to see nothing in
revenue but banks, and circulations, and annuities on lives, and
tontines, and perpetual rents, and all the small wares of the shop.
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