I believe that I understate the sum
when I say that, in pursuit of this will-of-the-wisp (the liberties of
Europe and the balance of power), there has been extracted from the
industry of the people of this small island no less an amount than
L2,000,000,000 sterling. I cannot imagine how much L2,000,000,000 is,
and therefore I shall not attempt to make you comprehend it. I presume
it is something like those vast and incomprehensible astronomical
distances with which we have been lately made familiar, but, however
familiar, we feel that we do not know one bit more about them than we
did before. When I try to think of that sum of L2,000,000,000 there
is a sort of vision passes before my mind's eye. I see your peasant
labourer delve and plough, sow and reap, sweat beneath the summer's
sun, or grow prematurely old before the winter's blast. I see your
noble mechanic, with his manly countenance and his matchless skill,
toiling at his bench or his forge. I see one of the workers in our
factories in the north, a woman--a girl it may be--gentle and good, as
many of them are, as your sisters and daughters are--I see her intent
upon the spindle, whose revolutions are so rapid that the eye fails
altogether to detect them, or watching the alternating flight of the
unresting shuttle. I turn again to another portion of your population,
which, 'plunged in mines, forgets a sun was made', and I see the man
who brings up from the secret chambers of the earth the elements of
the riches and greatness of his country.
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