" such charters would, in the face, be
charters not of rights, but of exclusion. The effect is the same under
the form they now stand; and the only persons on whom they operate are
the persons whom they exclude. Those whose rights are guaranteed, by
not being taken away, exercise no other rights than as members of the
community they are entitled to without a charter; and, therefore, all
charters have no other than an indirect negative operation. They do not
give rights to A, but they make a difference in favour of A by taking
away the right of B, and consequently are instruments of injustice.

But charters and corporations have a more extensive evil effect
than what relates merely to elections. They are sources of endless
contentions in the places where they exist, and they lessen the common
rights of national society. A native of England, under the operation of
these charters and corporations, cannot be said to be an Englishman in
the full sense of the word. He is not free of the nation, in the same
manner that a Frenchman is free of France, and an American of America.
His rights are circumscribed to the town, and, in some cases, to the
parish of his birth; and all other parts, though in his native land, are
to him as a foreign country. To acquire a residence in these, he must
undergo a local naturalisation by purchase, or he is forbidden or
expelled the place. This species of feudality is kept up to aggrandise
the corporations at the ruin of towns; and the effect is visible.

The generality of corporation towns are in a state of solitary decay,
and prevented from further ruin only by some circumstance in their
situation, such as a navigable river, or a plentiful surrounding
country. As population is one of the chief sources of wealth (for
without it land itself has no value), everything which operates to
prevent it must lessen the value of property; and as corporations have
not only this tendency, but directly this effect, they cannot but be
injurious. If any policy were to be followed, instead of that of general
freedom, to every person to settle where he chose (as in France or
America) it would be more consistent to give encouragement to new comers
than to preclude their admission by exacting premiums from them.*[29]

The persons most immediately interested in the abolition of corporations
are the inhabitants of the towns where corporations are established. The
instances of Manchester, Birmingham, and Sheffield sho