We tolerate them because property and liberty, to a degree,
require that toleration. But why proscribe the other, and surely, in
every point of view, the more laudable, use of estates? Why, through
the violation of all property, through an outrage upon every principle
of liberty, forcibly carry them from the better to the worse?
This comparison between the new individuals and the old corps is
made upon a supposition that no reform could be made in the latter.
But in a question of reformation I always consider corporate bodies,
whether sole or consisting of many, to be much more susceptible of a
public direction by the power of the state, in the use of their
property and in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their
members, than private citizens ever can be or, perhaps, ought to be;
and this seems to me a very material consideration for those who
undertake anything which merits the name of a politic enterprise.-
So far as to the estates of monasteries.
With regard to the estates possessed by bishops and canons and
commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reason some landed
estates may not be held otherwise than by inheritance. Can any
philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive or the
comparative evil of having a certain, and that too a large, portion of
landed property passing in succession through persons whose title to
it is, always in theory and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety,
morals, and learning- a property which, by its destination, in their
turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the noblest families
renovation and support, to the lowest the means of dignity and
elevation; a property the tenure of which is the performance of some
duty (whatever value you may choose to set upon that duty), and the
character of whose proprietors demands, at least, an exterior
decorum and gravity of manners; who are to exercise a generous but
temperate hospitality; part of whose income they are to consider as
a trust for charity; and who, even when they fail in their trust, when
they slide from their character and degenerate into a mere common
secular nobleman or gentleman, are in no respect worse than those
who may succeed them in their forfeited possessions? Is it better that
estates should be held by those who have no duty than by those who
have one?- by those whose character and destination point to virtues
than by those who have no rule and direction in the expenditure of
their estates but their own will and appetite? Nor are these estates
held together in the character or with the evils supposed inherent
in mortmain.
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