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 guarded 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 were 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.
Pages:
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433