In my judgment, one of the chief sources of the
bad economy of the country now is the enormous aggregation of capitals.
When shall we return to a sound conception of the right to property--
namely, as being official, implying and demanding the performance of
commensurate duties! Nothing but the most horrible perversion of humanity
and moral justice, under the specious name of political economy, could have
blinded men to this truth as to the possession of land,--the law of God
having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every rood of earth with
the maintenance and watchful labour of man. But money, stock, riches by
credit, transferable and convertible at will, are under no such
obligations; and, unhappily, it is from the selfish autocratic possession
of _such_ property, that our landholders have learnt their present theory
of trading with that which was never meant to be an object of commerce.
[Footnote 1:
See the splendid essay in the Friend (vol. ii, p. 47.) on the vulgar errors
respecting taxes and taxation.
"A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial
harangues against some proposed impost, said, 'The nation has been already
bled in every vein, and is faint with loss of blood.
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