never yet persuade myself to be of his opinion. Men, I still think, ought to be weighed not counted. Their worth ought to be the final estimate of their value.

Among the occasions and minor causes of this change in the views and measures of our Land-owners, and as being itself a consequent on that system of credit, the outline of which was given in a preceding page, the universal practice of enhancing the sale price of every article on the presumption of Bad Debts, is not the least noticeable. Nor, if we reflect that this additional per centage is repeated at each intermediate stage of its elaboration and distribution from the Grower or Importer to the last Retailer inclusively, will it appear the least operative. Necessary, and therefore justifiable, as this plan of reprisal by anticipation may be in the case of each individual dealer, yet taken collectively and without reference to persons, the plan itself would, I suspect, startle an unfamiliarized conscience, as a sort of non-descript Piracy, not promiscuous in its exactions only because by a curious anomaly it grants a free pass to the offending party. Or if the Law maxim, volentibus nulla fit injuria, is applicable in this case, it may perhaps be described more courteously as

*

a Benefit Society of all the careful and honest men in the kingdom to pay the debts of the dishonest or improvident. It is mentioned here, however, as one of the appendages to the twin paramount causes, the Paper Currency and the National Debt, and for the sake of the conjoint results. Would we learn what these results are? What they have been in the higher, and what in the most numerous, class of society? Alas! that some of the intermediate rounds in the social ladder have been broken and not replaced, is itself one of these results. Retrace the progress of things from 1792 to 1813, when the tide was at its height, and then, as far as its rapidity will permit, the ebb from its first turn to the dead low-water mark of the last quarter. Then see whether the remainder may not be generalized under the following heads. Fluctuation in the wages of labor, alternate privation and excess (not in all at the same time, but successively in each) consequent improvidence, and over all discontent and a system of factious confederacy-these form the history of the mechanics and lower ranks of our cities and towns. In the country, a peasantry sinking into pauperism, step for step with the rise of the farmer's profits and indulgencies.

On the side of the landlord and his compeers, we shall find the presence of the same causes attested by answerable effects. Great as "their almost magical effects"* on the increase of prices were in the necessaries of life, they were still greater, disproportionally greater, in all articles of shew and luxury. With few exceptions, it soon became difficult, and at length impracticable, for the gentry of the land, for the possessors of fixed property to retain the rank of their ancestors, or their own former establishments, without joining in the general competition under the

During the composition of this sheet I have had, and availed myself of the opportunity of perusing the Report of the Board of Agriculture for the year 1816. The numerous reflections, which this most extraordinary volume excited in my mind, I cannot even touch on, in this closing sheet of an Address that has already extended far beyond my original purpose. But had I perused it at the commencement, I should still have felt it my duty to direct the main force of my animadversions against the Demagogue class of States empirics. I was not indeed, ignorant of the aid, which they derived from other quarters:-nor am I now ashamed of not having anticipated its extent. There is, however, one communication (p. 208 to 227) from Mr. Mosely, from which, with the abatement only of the passage on tythes, I cannot withhold my entire admiration. It almost redeems the remainder of the Report.

influence of the same trading spirit. Their dependants were of course either selected from, or driven into, the same eddy; while the temptation of obtaining more than the legal interest for their principal became more and more strong with all persons who, neither trading nor farming, had lived on the interest of their fortunes. It was in this latter class that the rash, and too frequently, the unprincipled projector found his readiest dupes. Had we but the secret history of the building speculations only in the vicinity of the metropolis, too many of its pages would supply an afflicting but instructive comment. That both here, and in all other departments, this increased momentum in the spirit of trade has been followed by results of the most desirable nature, I have myself*, exerted my best powers to evince, at a period when to

* In a variety of articles published at different periods in the Morning Post and Courier; but with most success. in the Essay, before cited, on Vulgar Errors on Taxation; which had the advantage of being transferred almost entire to the columns of a daily paper, of the largest circulation, and from thence, in larger or smaller extracts; to several of our Provincial Journals. It was likewise reprinted in two of the American Federalist Papers: and a translation appeared, I have been told, in the Hamburgh Correspondenten.

present the fairest and most animating features of the system, and to prove their vast and charm-like influence on the power and resources of the nation appeared a duty of patriotism. Nothing, however, was advanced incompatible with the position, which even then I did not conceal, and which from the same sense of duty I am now attempting to display; namely, that the extension of the commercial spirit into our agricultural system, added to the over-balance of the same spirit, even within its own sphere; aggravated by the operation of our Revenue Laws; and finally reflected in the habits, and tendencies of the Laboring Classes; is the ground-work

our calamity, and the main predisposing cause, without which the late occasions would (some of them not have existed, and the remainder) not have produced the present distresses.

That Agriculture requires principles essentially different from those of Trade,—that a gentleman ought not to regard his estate as a merchant his cargo, or a shopkeeper his stock,—admits of an easy proof from the different tenure of Landed Property,* and

The very idea of individual or private property, in our present acceptation of the term, and according