whom rents have come under another form, to submit each contract to the scrutiny of good religious persons, and to consult the salvation of their own souls.' Pius V. Rome, 14 Calen. Feb. 1568.

Remark, that, according to the foregoing Decree, the conditions necessary and indispensable to render the purchase of an annuity free from sin, are five-fold; first, the thing yielding the rent must be fairly sold; second, it must be an immovable commodity; third, its bounds or limits must be specified; fourth, it must be a thing of its own nature fruitful; and lastly, the just price must be paid down before, or at the time of purchase. All which conditions are visible in the sale of rent arising out of a farm; or in other words in the sale of the farm itself. The farm is specified, it is a thing immovable, and naturally fruitful; and if it be fairly sold and the just price be paid before, or at the day of the contract, the transaction is free from the stain of usury.

Fund holders, in purchasing the government annuities,' as they are called, follow not any of said conditions: neither estates, farms, houses, nor any other fruitful or immovable things, are fairly sold and transferred to them. They squeeze in taxes from the famished nation, the yearly interest, or dividends; they having retained a right to receive the capital at pleasure, or at some specific time, either directly from the government, or by the disposal of the stock at the money market; they often sell for much more than the first cost. Consequently the annual dividends which they draw, is a price for the use of the money, which they had relinquished only for a time. It is in truth and fact, usury of the most hideous description. The public funds are by far more abhorrent than the private usury; in the one no body sins or suffers, but the contractors-the lender and borrower; but, in the other, the innocent suffer for the guilty. 'The nation that had no hand or part in the loans of the fund holders to the government are crushed by taxation, scattered and dispersed among the nations and countries. On both sides, with the fund-holders and private usurers, is a loan made, in hope of receiving something thereby-in hope of gain. The public lender is on better footing than the

private; whilst this man is liable to suffer from the villany or insolvency of his debtors, that man is safe in the public securities; for, until the whole nation is corroded by the taxes, and reduced to bankruptcy, he draws the interest or dividends annually, and can regain his capital, and sometimes more, by selling his title or bonds to other usurers at the money-market.

Though usurers palliate the deformity of the system under the veil of fine words-funds, omniums, debentures, securities, it retains the nature and effects of debt, usury, and interest, on the part of the beggared, heart-broken country. Had not usurers been so numerous these fifty years, there would not be such extravagant wars, standing armies, dead weight, or sinecures in England. When you recollect that usurers, or security-men, gave rise to all these curses: when you then turn in your thoughts the millions of our brave youths fallen by untimely death in the foreign field, the distress and ruin in both islands, the burnings, houghings, floggings, murders, robberies perpetrated by a famished population in Ireland, or the prisons, gallows, exiles, that naturally followed; and if you turn your eyes upon the same race of poverty, crime, and punishment that the English are going to run; and, lastly, on the ghastly view rising before you at both sides the Channel, from panics and convulsions, you must allow that no language affords terms sufficiently odious or strong to convey a true idea of usury and security-men; you must allow that they are devourers of substance, murderers of society, agents from hell. Will our holy nuns join the blood-suckers; will they join the Jews and Quakers to visit the 'Change, to live by the tears and sighs and dispersion of their fellow creatures?

The spendthrift in private life throws himself into the usurer's snare, is soon stript of his patrimony, hurled into obscurity, and is no more heard of; his profligacy injures himself, but nobody else. The public spendthrift, to the purpose of feeding his pas sions-waging foolish and wanton wars, and upholding groups of idle, worthless courtiers, loads the nation with debts; that will breed, like maggots about the carion, myriads of blood-suckers; filthy usurers to be eternally feeding on the sweat of the laboring classes. But the fund-holders maintain that, as they purchase

the funds, they have as good right to live in idleness, or in any other manner they please, by the fruit of their purchase as the purchaser of a farm, or of any other article, has to live as he pleases, from the rent or fruit thereof; that the purchase of the funds is as fair and equitable as any other purchase.'

But the sophistry and deception of their saying becomes manifest from a trifling reflection. The disparity between the purchase of funds and estates is at once seen by reflecting on the common expression, I have purchased his lease; whilst in reality he bought only the farm specified in the lease; that deed being merely an evidence or expression of the contract. In like manner, when A. makes a loan to B. a bond expressive of both principal and interest, is passed to the lender. If the bond be subsequently sold to a third person-to C. for instance, he becomes the creditor; to to him is B. liable for both principal and interest. Who sees not that C. the purchaser of the usurious bond, becomes a usurer himself? So when a set of Quakers or Jews, make a loan to the government, they receive bonds' or 'scripts,' or whatever you call them, promising to pay the bearer the principal and quarterly interest, or dividends'; which scraps of paper they afterwards sell at the money market. Is it not then manifest that those bonds, whether they be called scripts, securities, debentures, consols, omniums, or otherwise, retain, wherever they pass, the nature of usurious bonds, and that the purchasers, or holders of them, by falling into the shoes of the original usurers, become usurers themselves; is it not also clear that though the bonds are said to have been purchased,' it is the principal and interest specified in. them, that is purchased.

The bonds or acknowledgments which the government gives to the public lenders, are called funds and the holders thereof fundholders. Usury, since its introduction by Harry VIII. was practised by the meanest, basest, and avaricious parts of the community, whilst others had their scruples on the subject Thus did a conflict between the gospel and the world, between reason and avarice last until the Prince of Orange, commonly called Wil

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liam III. mounted the throne. When he wanted loans on a larger scale, their scruples should be smothered by palliating the deformity of usury. As satan now sees a prospect of a mighty haul, he brings all his wiles into action to gloss over the infernal bait; the usual Scripture names are altered into barbarous and unheard of terms. In the fourth year of William and Mary, An. 1692, an act of Parliament is passed' for granting to their Majesties certain rates and duties upon beer, &c. for securing certain recompenses and advantages to such persons as shall voluntarily advance the sum of ten hundred thousand pounds towards carrying on the war against France.' Behold, to lend is called voluntarily to advance; and the yearly interest is styled certain recompenses and advantages! The duties on the beer, &c. were to be deposited weekly in the Exchequer and formed there into a fund, distinct and apart from the other monies from which fund the contributors were entitled to receive yearly shares or dividends. The collecting the duties, as it were, into a fund from which the lenders drew the shares or interest, gave them, in the course of time, the name fund-holders and to the whole scheme of lending to the Government the appellation, of Funding system; though there is not one pound of all the money that was borrowed now in a heap or fund any where; it was long since devoured by the Court harpies. And as the Orange Prince found usurers, in abundance, to swallow Satan's pill-the certain recompenses and advantages,' he soon threw before them more pills: for in the 5th W. and M. Chap. 7, and 20, An. 1694, he called for two different loans the first one million, and the second one million and half. The wordy entanglement of the previous statute is totally omitted in these: the wily Legislator now, that the usurer's conscience is a match for the naked dose, no longer deals out gilded pills; no longer does he palliate the monster with obscene words, but speaks in plain language,

THE BANKING SYSTEM IS USURY, FRAUD,

AND DECEPTION.

Who would imagine that the Trafficker, who raises a loan from the Usurer, makes the public pay the interest, and in many cases, the principal too? He certainly does. Has he not to scrape from his trade, besides the interest of the laon, bread for his family, clerk-salaries and so forth: a thing impossible, if he recur not to fraud and extortion. If his speculations prosper, he deems himself fortunate, otherwise bankruptcies is the alternative. Success, or no success, in his speculations, the public, not he, will be the sufferers; with this only difference, that the extortion and cheatery corrode insensibly; bankruptcy deals out destruction open and rapid. By keeping in view that the trafficker filches some how or other from the community whatever interest is due to the creditors, the fraud and deception of the Banking system is easily seen through.

The bank when stript of its name, is but a mere association of persons putting their money into a common stock to be loaned for profit-an association of cunning knaves, amassing wealth and building palaces at the cost of the poor inhabitants of the hovels. Messrs. A. B. and C. and some small fry, obtain a charter for a bank in the town Someplace with a capital stock of $250,000. A. B. and C. take $50,000 of the stock; the remainder goes to the small fry. A. B. and C. being reputed wealthy, easily borrow their share of the stock from some other bank. A. is chosen president, B. and C. directors; and the small fry, or their relatives, become clerks, runners, or understrappers of some sort.

Now the bank being in full operation, A. B, and C. mutually endorse notes and draw $100,000, each. With half that sum they repay the money that had been borrowed from the other bank; and with the remainder are artizans and laborers in abundance employed; brick, stones, and lumber purchased for the notes of the new bank. All classes of the neighborhood now rejoice for the creation of the bank that causes so much stir in the prices and that brings happiness and plenty into the bosom of each family, The bank, by law, issues notes to three times the amount of its