When I see all this I have
before me a mass of produce and of wealth which I am no more able to
comprehend than I am that L2,000,000,000 of which I have spoken, but I
behold in its full proportion the hideous error of your Governments,
whose fatal policy consumes in some cases a half, never less than a
third, of all the results of that industry which God intended should
fertilize and bless every home in England, but the fruits of which
are squandered in every part of the surface of the globe, without
producing the smallest good to the people of England.
We have, it is true, some visible results that are of a more positive
character. We have that which some people call a great advantage--the
National Debt--a debt which is now so large that the most prudent, the
most economical, and the most honest have given up all hope, not of
its being paid off, but of its being diminished in amount. We have,
too, taxes which have been during many years so onerous that there
have been times when the patient beast of burden threatened to revolt,
so onerous that it has been utterly impossible to levy them with any
kind of honest equality, according to the means of the people to
pay them. We have that, moreover, which is a standing wonder to
all foreigners who consider our condition, an amount of apparently
immovable pauperism, which to strangers is wholly irreconcilable with
the fact that we, as a nation, produce more of what should make us all
comfortable than is produced by any other nation of similar numbers on
the face of the globe.
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