est of the species, or what is much the same thing, the most
responsible, uniformly maintain that he who has the largest stake in
society is, in the nature of things, the most qualified to administer
its affairs. By a stake in society is meant, agreeable to universal
convention, a multiplication of those interests which occupy us in our
daily concerns--or what is vulgarly called property. This principle
works by exciting us to do right through those heavy investments of our
own which would inevitably suffer were we to do wrong. The proposition
is now clear, nor can the premises readily be mistaken. Happiness is the
aim of society; and property, or a vested interest in that society,
is the best pledge of our disinterestedness and justice, and the
best qualification for its proper control. It follows as a legitimate
corollary that a multiplication of those interests will increase the
stake, and render us more and more worthy of the trust by elevating us
as near as may be to the pure and ethereal condition of the angels. One
of those happy accidents which sometimes make men emperors and kings,
had made me, perhaps, the richest subject of Europe. With this polar
star of theory shining before my eyes, and with practical means so
ample, it would have been clearly my own fault had I not steered my bark
into the right haven. If he who had the heaviest investments was the
most likely to love his fellows, there could be no great difficulty for
one in my situation to take the lead in philanthropy. It is true that
with superficial observers the instance of my own immediate ancestor
might be supposed to form an exception, or rather an objection, to the
theory. So far from this being the case, however, it proves the
very reverse. My father in a great measure had concentrated all his
investments in the national debt! Now, beyond all cavil, he loved the
funds intensely; grew violent when they were assailed; cried out for
bayonets when the mass declaimed against taxation; eulogized the gallows
when there were menaces of revolt, and in a hundred other ways prove
that "where the treasure is, there will the heart be also." The instance
of my father, therefore, like all exceptions, only went to prove
the excellence of the rule. He had merely fallen into the error of
contraction, when the only safe course was that of expansion. I resolved
to expand; to do that which probably no political economist had ever
yet thought of doing--in short, to ca