ren and useless, producing like that on a gaming table no accession
to itself, and is withdrawn from commerce and agriculture, where it
would have produced addition to the common mass. The wealth therefore
heaped upon individuals by the funding and banking systems, would be
productive of general poverty and distress. That in addition to the
encouragement these measures gave to vice and idleness, they had
furnished effectual means of corrupting such a portion of the
legislature as turned the balance between the honest voters. This
corrupt squad, deciding the voice of the legislature, had manifested
their dispositions to get rid of the limitations imposed by the
constitution; limitations on the faith of which the states acceded to
that instrument. They were proceeding rapidly in their plan of
absorbing all power, invading the rights of the states, and converting
the federal into a consolidated government.

That the ultimate object of all this was to prepare the way for a
change from the present republican form of government to that of a
monarchy, of which the English constitution was to be the model. So
many of the friends of monarchy were in the legislature, that aided by
the corrupt squad of paper dealers who were at their devotion, they
made a majority in both houses. The republican party, even when united
with the anti-federalists, continued a minority.

That of all the mischiefs resulting from the system of measures which
was so much reprobated, none was so afflicting, so fatal to every
honest hope, as the corruption of the legislature. As it was the
earliest of these measures, it became the instrument for producing the
rest, and would be the instrument for producing in future, a king,
lords, and commons; or whatever else those who directed it might
choose. Withdrawn such a distance from the eye of their constituents,
they would form the most corrupt government on earth, if the means of
their corruption were not prevented.

These strictures on the conduct of administration were principally
directed against measures which had originated with the secretary of
the treasury, and had afterwards received the sanction of the
legislature. In the southern division of the continent, that officer
was unknown, except to a few military friends, and to those who had
engaged in the legislative or executive departments of the former or
present government. His systems of revenue having been generally
opposed by the southern member