I do not wish to hurt anybody’s feelings by citing specific examples of religious heads, or those claiming to be acting in the name of religion, carrying on a number of worldly activities of a most undersirable kind. They not only minister to the benefit or aggrandisement of the particular sect or class to which they belong, but, more often than not, they relate to the particular individual who for the moment claims to be the head or representative of that religion. The association of private property, the possession of material wealth, and the possibility of developing that wealth by trading, by speculation, by economic activity, which many of those carry on in the name of religion, or in virtue of their being heads of religion, are productive of evils of which perhaps the innocent Members of this House have no conception.
