I shall now explain the relation of the insular monopoly to God's designs. It may be predicted that the views of the Creator on this point will not be in agreement with the opinions of civilised men who, in matters of politics, have always vegetated, scarcely raising themselves from insignificance to mediocrity. They might as well have stayed at the bottom of the ladder as drag themselves one rung above it.

In centuries more religious than our own it was rightly thought that God sometimes punished nations; and if ever this opinion was plausible it is today, when the whole of humanity is persecuted and degraded by a single scourge, the island monopoly that ravages every aspect of the social world.

It destroys industry at its base by closing the lines of communication.

It attacks humanity en masse by financing and sustaining wars that force peoples to tear each other apart.

It degrades sovereigns by making them slaves to a subsidy that neutralises their political systems.

It outrages honour by subordinating the whole social mechanism to cheap mercantile calculations.

Such are the depths to which our economic sciences have brought us: the insular monopoly has re-opened Pandora's box, and the multitude of calamities which have come from it should have been recognised as a punishment from the supreme being, except that our metaphysical subtleties have habituated the moderns to doubting providence and degrading God by lacklustre arguments about his existence, and by a half-hearted belief that is just as impertinent as atheism.