At that day they were bewildered in their notions of property, and their standards of value; they had neither discovered the sources nor the progress of the wealth of a nation. They murmured at importation, for which they seemed to pay the penalties, and looked on exportation as a conveyance of the national property to the foreigner. They fixed the prices at which all consumable articles were to be sold; the farmer's garner was inspected; the landlords who became graziers were denounced; forestallers and regraters haunted the privy councils of the king; the markets were never better supplied; and the people wondered why every article was dearer. About this time the prices of all commodities, both in France and England, had gradually risen. The enterprise of commerce was probably working on larger capitals. As expenses increased, the landlords held that they were entitled to higher rents. In Crowley's denunciations, "God's plague" is invoked against all "lease-mongers, pilling and polling the poor commoner." The Parliament of Henry the Eighth had legalized the interest of money at ten per cent.; Robin would have this "sinful act" repealed: loans should be gratuitous by the admonition in Luke, "Do ye lend, looking for no gain thereof." In this manner he applies the text against usury. They seemed to have no notion that he who bought ever intended to sell. This rude political economist proposed that all property should be kept stationary. No one should have a better portion than he was born to. Where then was to be found the portion of "the poor commoner" not born to any? or him whose loss of fortune was to be repaired by industry and enterprise? Prices advanced; double rents! double tithes! Our radical preacher attacks his brother ecclesiastics. "We can neither come into the world, nor remain in it, nor go out of it, but they must have a fleece! Let it be lawful to perform all their ministries by ourselves; we can lay an honest man in his grave without a set of carrion-crows scenting their prey." The splendour of the ancient landed aristocracy and the prodigal luxury of the ecclesiastics more forcibly struck their minds than those silent arts of enlarged traffic which were perpetuating the wealth of the nation, and producing its concomitant evils.