“Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other
notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they
are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public,
only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they
can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that
they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to
toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them
as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these
contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is
considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are
accounted laws; yet these wicked men, after they have, by a most
insatiable covetousness, divided that among themselves with which all
the rest might have been well supplied, are far from that happiness
that is enjoyed among the Utopians; for the use as well as the desire
of money being extinguished, much anxiety and great occasions of
mischief is cut off with it, and who does not see that the frauds,
thefts, robberies, quarrels, tumults, contentions, seditions, murders,
treacheries, and witchcrafts, which are, indeed, rather punished than
restrained by the severities of law, would all fall off, if money were
not any more valued by the world? Men’s fears, solicitudes, cares,
labours, and watchings would all perish in the same moment with the
value of money; even poverty itself, for the relief of which money
seems most necessary, would fall. But, in order to the apprehending
this aright, take one instance:—
“Consider any year, that has been so unfruitful that many thousands
have died of hunger; and yet if, at the end of that year, a survey was
made of the granaries of all the rich men that have hoarded up the
corn, it would be found that there was enough among them to have
prevented all that consumption of men that perished in misery; and
that, if it had been distributed among them, none would have felt the
terrible effects of that scarcity: so easy a thing would it be to
supply all the necessities of life, if that blessed thing called money,
which is pretended to be invented for procuring them was not really the
only thing that obstructed their being procured!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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