be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the
world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His
perfections. The rest is our own. It may be prejudicial to the great
end,--it may be auxiliary. Wise men, who, as such, are not _admirers_,
(not admirers at least of the _munera terrae_,) are not violently
attached to these things, nor do they violently hate them. Wisdom is not
the most severe corrector of folly. They are the rival follies which
mutually wage so unrelenting a war, and which make so cruel a use of
their advantages, as they can happen to engage the immoderate vulgar, on
the one side or the other, in their quarrels. Prudence would be neuter;
but if, in the contention between fond attachment and fierce antipathy
concerning things in their nature not made to produce such heats, a
prudent man were obliged to make a choice of what errors and excesses of
enthusiasm he would condemn or bear, perhaps he would think the
superstition which builds to be more tolerable than that which
demolishes,--that which adorns a country, than that which deforms
it,--that which endows, than that which plunders,--that which disposes
to mistaken beneficence, than that which stimulates to real
injustice,--that which leads a man to refuse to himself lawful
pleasures, than that which snatches from others the scanty subsistence
of their self-denial. Such, I think, is very nearly the state of the
question between the ancient founders of monkish superstition and the
superstition of the pretended philosophers of the hour.

For the present I postpone all consideration of the supposed public
profit of the sale, which, however, I conceive to be perfectly delusive.
I shall here only consider it as a transfer of property. On the policy
of that transfer I shall trouble you with a few thoughts.

In every prosperous community something more is produced than goes to
the immediate support of the producer. This surplus forms the income of
the landed capitalist. It will be spent by a proprietor who does not
labor. But this idleness is itself the spring of labor, this repose the
spur to industry. The only concern for the state is, that the capital
taken in rent from the land should be returned again to the industry
from whence it came, and that its expenditure should be with the least
possible detriment to the morals of those who expend it and to those of
the people to whom it is returned.

In all the views of receipt, expend