were waging unjust war.

From artifice sprang the profits of manufactures, commerce, and banking,
mercantile frauds, and pretensions which are honored with the beautiful
names of TALENT and GENIUS, but which ought to be regarded as the last
degree of knavery and deception; and, finally, all sorts of social
inequalities.

In those forms of robbery which are prohibited by law, force and
artifice are employed alone and undisguised; in the authorized forms,
they conceal themselves within a useful product, which they use as a
tool to plunder their victim.

The direct use of violence and stratagem was early and universally
condemned; but no nation has yet got rid of that kind of robbery which
acts through talent, labor, and possession, and which is the source
of all the dilemmas of casuistry and the innumerable contradictions of
jurisprudence.

The right of force and the right of artifice--glorified by the
rhapsodists in the poems of the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey"--inspired the
legislation of the Greeks and Romans, from which they passed into our
morals and codes. Christianity has not changed at all. The Gospel should
not be blamed, because the priests, as stupid as the legists, have been
unable either to expound or to understand it. The ignorance of councils
and popes upon all questions of morality is equal to that of the
market-place and the money-changers; and it is this utter ignorance
of right, justice, and society, which is killing the Church, and
discrediting its teachings for ever. The infidelity of the Roman church
and other Christian churches is flagrant; all have disregarded the
precept of Jesus; all have erred in moral and doctrinal points; all
are guilty of teaching false and absurd dogmas, which lead straight to
wickedness and murder. Let it ask pardon of God and men,--this church
which called itself infallible, and which has grown so corrupt in
morals; let its reformed sisters humble themselves,... and the people,
undeceived, but still religious and merciful, will begin to think. [29]

One of the main causes of Ireland's poverty to-day is the immense
revenues of the English clergy. So heretics and orthodox--Protestants
and Papists--cannot reproach each other. All have strayed from the path
of justice; all have disobeyed the eighth commandment of the Decalogue:
"Thou shalt not steal."

The development of right has followed the same order, in its various
expressions, that property has in its forms. Every