s, and
all the innumerable fopperies and follies in which opulence sports away
the burden of its superfluity?

We tolerate even these,--not from love of them, but for fear of worse.
We tolerate them, because property and liberty, to a degree, require
that toleration. But why proscribe the other, and surely, in every point
of view, the more laudable use of estates? Why, through the violation of
all property, through an outrage upon every principle of liberty,
forcibly carry them from the better to the worse?

This comparison between the new individuals and the old corps is made
upon a supposition that no reform could be made in the latter. But, in a
question of reformation, I always consider corporate bodies, whether
sole or consisting of many, to be much more susceptible of a public
direction, by the power of the state, in the use of their property, and
in the regulation of modes and habits of life in their members, than
private citizens ever can be, or perhaps ought to be; and this seems to
me a very material consideration for those who undertake anything which
merits the name of a politic enterprise.--So far as to the estates of
monasteries.

With regard to the estates possessed by bishops and canons and
commendatory abbots, I cannot find out for what reason some landed
estates may not be held otherwise than by inheritance. Can any
philosophic spoiler undertake to demonstrate the positive or the
comparative evil of having a certain, and that, too, a large, portion of
landed property passing in succession through persons whose title to it
is, always in theory and often in fact, an eminent degree of piety,
morals, and learning; a property which by its destination, in their
turn, and on the score of merit, gives to the noblest families
renovation and support, to the lowest the means of dignity and
elevation; a property, the tenure of which is the performance of some
duty, (whatever value you may choose to set upon that duty,) and the
character of whose proprietors demands at least an exterior decorum and
gravity of manners,--who are to exercise a generous, but temperate
hospitality,--part of whose income they are to consider as a trust for
charity,--and who, even when they fail in their trust, when they slide
from their character, and degenerate into a mere common secular nobleman
or gentleman, are in no respect worse than those who may succeed them in
their forfeited possessions? Is it better that estates should be h