Before all, if the princes and lords wish to fulfill the duties of their office they must prohibit and banish the vicious system of monopolies, which is altogether unendurable in town or country. As for the trading companies, they are thoroughly corrupt and made up of great injustices. They have every sort of commodity in their own power and they do with them just as they please, raise or lower the prices at their own convenience and crush and ruin all the small shop people—just as the pike does with the small fish in the water—as if they were lords over God’s creatures and exempt from all laws of authority and religion.... How can it be godly and just that in so short a time a man should grow so rich that he can outbid kings and emperors? They have brought things to such a pass that all the rest of the world must carry on business with risk and damage, gaining today, losing tomorrow, while they continually grow richer and richer, and make up for their losses by higher profits; so it is no wonder that they are appropriating to themselves the riches of the whole world.
Intemperate Speech
(From the Epistle of James)
(A.D. 100 to 120)
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasures together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just: and he doth not resist you. Be patient, therefore, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and latter rain. Be ye also patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
Government
By Marcus Aurelius
(Roman emperor and philosopher, A.D. 121-180)
And these your professed politicians, the only true practical philosophers of the world (as they think themselves) so full of affected gravity, or such professed lovers of virtue and honesty, what wretches be they in very deed; how vile and contemptible in themselves! O man, what ado dost thou make!