It is not the confiscation of our Church property from this example in
France that I dread, though I think this would be no trifling evil. The
great source of my solicitude is, lest it should ever be considered in
England as the policy of a state to seek a resource in confiscations of
any kind, or that any one description of citizens should be brought to
regard any of the others as their proper prey.[118] Nations are wading
deeper and deeper into an ocean of boundless debt. Public debts, which
at first were a security to governments, by interesting many in the
public tranquillity, are likely in their excess to become the means of
their subversion. If governments provide for these debts by heavy
impositions, they perish by becoming odious to the people. If they do
not provide for them, they will be undone by the efforts of the most
dangerous of all parties: I mean an extensive, discontented moneyed
interest, injured and not destroyed. The men who compose this interest
look for their security, in the first instance, to the fidelity of
government; in the second, to its power. If they find the old
governments effete, worn out, and with their springs relaxed, so as not
to be of sufficient vigor for their purposes, they may seek new ones
that shall be possessed of more energy; and this energy will be
derived, not from an acquisition of resources, but from a contempt of
justice.
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