We entertain a high opinion of the legislative authority; but we have
never dreamt that Parliaments had any right whatever to violate
property, to overrule prescription, or to force a currency of their own
fiction in the place of that which is real, and recognized by the law of
nations. But you, who began with refusing to submit to the most moderate
restraints, have ended by establishing an unheard-of despotism. I find
the ground upon which your confiscators go is this: that, indeed, their
proceedings could not be supported in a court of justice, but that the
rules of prescription cannot bind a legislative assembly.[115] So that
this legislative assembly of a free nation sits, not for the security,
but for the destruction of property,--and not of property only, but of
every rule and maxim which can give it stability, and of those
instruments which can alone give it circulation.
When the Anabaptists of Munster, in the sixteenth century, had filled
Germany with confusion, by their system of levelling, and their wild
opinions concerning property, to what country in Europe did not the
progress of their fury furnish just cause of alarm? Of all things,
wisdom is the most terrified with epidemical fanaticism, because of all
enemies it is that against which she is the least able to furnish any
kind of resource. We cannot be ignorant of the spirit of atheistical
fanaticism, that is inspired by a multitude of writings dispersed with
incredible assiduity and expense, and by sermons delivered in all the
streets and places of public resort in Paris.
Pages:
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491