All the envy against
wealth and power was artificially directed against other
descriptions of riches. On what other principle than that which I have
stated can we account for an appearance so extraordinary and unnatural
as that of the ecclesiastical possessions, which had stood so many
successions of ages and shocks of civil violences, and were girded
at once by justice and by prejudice, being applied to the payment of
debts comparatively recent, invidious, and contracted by a decried and
subverted government?
WAS the public estate a sufficient stake for the public debts?
Assume that it was not, and that a loss must be incurred somewhere.-
When the only estate lawfully possessed, and which the contracting
parties had in contemplation at the time in which their bargain was
made, happens to fail, who according to the principles of natural
and legal equity ought to be the sufferer? Certainly it ought to be
either the party who trusted or the party who persuaded him to
trust, or both, and not third parties who had no concern with the
transaction. Upon any insolvency they ought to suffer who are weak
enough to lend upon bad security, or they who fraudulently held out
a security that was not valid. Laws are acquainted with no other rules
of decision. But by the new institute of the rights of men, the only
persons who in equity ought to suffer are the only persons who are
to be saved harmless: those are to answer the debt who neither were
lenders nor borrowers, mortgagers nor mortgagees.
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