Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the
question between the ancient founders of monkish superstition and
the superstition of the pretended philosophers of the hour.
For the present I postpone all consideration of the supposed
public profit of the sale, which however I conceive to be perfectly
delusive. I shall here only consider it as a transfer of property.
On the policy of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few
thoughts.
In every prosperous community something more is produced than goes
to the immediate support of the producer. This surplus forms the
income of the landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor
who does not labor. But this idleness is itself the spring of labor;
this repose the spur to industry. The only concern of the state is
that the capital taken in rent from the land should be returned
again to the industry from whence it came, and that its expenditure
should be with the least possible detriment to the morals of those who
expend it, and to those of the people to whom it is returned.
In all the views of receipt, expenditure, and personal employment,
a sober legislator would carefully compare the possessor whom he was
recommended to expel with the stranger who was proposed to fill his
place. Before the inconveniences are incurred which must attend all
violent revolutions in property through extensive confiscation, we
ought to have some rational assurance that the purchasers of the
confiscated property will be in a considerable degree more
laborious, more virtuous, more sober, less disposed to extort an
unreasonable proportion of the gains of the laborer, or to consume
on themselves a larger share than is fit for the measure of an
individual; or that they should be qualified to dispense the surplus
in a more steady and equal mode, so as to answer the purposes of a
politic expenditure, than the old possessors, call those possessors
bishops, or canons, or commendatory abbots, or monks, or what you
please.
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