text:  Was there ever heard more complex absurdity? Mark its stages: 1st If you _had_ taken them from Catholics of the 16th century how would _that_ translate any interest of property in the institutions to people of the nineteenth century simply as professing the same faith? We took various spoils about 1780 from Hyder Ali the sultan of Mysore: in 1799 we took others more costly from his son Tippoo: will that entitle some prince of Turkestan or Bokhara in the year 2000 to claim these spoils on the plea that he is a Mahometan? An interest of inheritance would thus be vested in the emptiest of abstractions