Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/266

258 of life; as any gentleman can attest, who has kept house for twenty years past. And this will equally affect poor countries as well as rich. For, although I look upon it as an impossibility that this kingdom should ever thrive under its present disadvantages, which, without a miracle, must still increase; yet, when the whole cash of the nation shall sink to fifty thousand pounds, we must, in all our traffick abroad, either of import or export, go by the general rate, at which money is valued in those countries, that enjoy the common privileges of humankind. For this reason no corporation (if the clergy may presume to call themselves one) should by any means grant away their properties in perpetuity, upon any consideration whatsoever; which is a rock that many corporations have split upon, to their great impoverishment, and sometimes to their utter undoing: because they are supposed to subsist for ever, and because no determination of money is of any certain perpetual intrinsick value. This is known enough in England, where estates let forever, some hundred years ago, by, several ancient noble families, do not at this present pay their posterity a twentieth part of what they are now worth at an easy rent.

A tax affecting one part of a nation, which already bears its full share in all parliamentary impositions, cannot possibly be just, except it be inflicted as a punishment upon that body of men which is taxed, for some great demerit or danger to the publick apprehended from those upon whom it is laid: thus the papists and nonjurors have been doubly taxed, for refusing to give proper securities to the government; which cannot be objected against the clergy. And therefore, if this bill should pass, I think it ought to be