chapters, and monasteries; but I do not see them end
there. I see the princes of the blood, who, by the oldest usages of that
kingdom, held large landed estates, (hardly with the compliment of a
debate,) deprived of their possessions, and, in lieu of their stable,
independent property, reduced to the hope of some precarious charitable
pension at the pleasure of an Assembly, which of course will pay little
regard to the rights of pensioners at pleasure, when it despises those
of legal proprietors. Flushed with the insolence of their first
inglorious victories, and pressed by the distresses caused by their lust
of unhallowed lucre, disappointed, but not discouraged, they have at
length ventured completely to subvert all property of all descriptions
throughout the extent of a great kingdom. They have compelled all men,
in all transactions of commerce, in the disposal of lands, in civil
dealing, and through the whole communion of life, to accept, as perfect
payment and good and lawful tender, the symbols of their speculations on
a projected sale of their plunder. What vestiges of liberty or property
have they left? The tenant-right of a cabbage-garden, a year's interest
in a hovel, the good-will of an ale-house or a baker's shop, the very
shadow of a constructive property, are more ceremoniously treated in our
Parliament than with you the oldest and most valuable landed
possessions, in the hands of the most respectable personages, or than
the whole body of the moneyed and commercial interest of your country.
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 si