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should have been in a situation to set all nations at defiance, and to declare openly "that not a cannon should be fired in Europe without our permission."

Nor would this have been an empty threat: we should have had ample means of enforcing obedience to it, without difficulty or injury. Our surplus revenue of twenty millions per annum, combined with the taxes applied to pay the interest of the six hundred millions of debt, which we should by this time have redeemed, would have given us a surplus income of forty millions per annum of the money of the war, which would have been applicable to the great purpose of humbling and controlling our national enemies. This forty millions would have been equal in solid gold to twenty millions per annum of our present money. What nation, or what. combination of nations, could have dared to resist our will, with such a surplus revenue as this at our disposal? How could the Russians, the Austrians, or the French, have dared to enter Turkey, Italy, or Spain, without our permission?

In short, turn the subject in what way we will, and examine it how we will, we find every thing wrong in our present system, and every thing right if a different system had been adopted. The system which is fraudulent, disgraceful, ruinous, and destructive in all its parts, that we have eulogised and adopted, and the system which is really just, salutary, safe, and necessary, that we have calumniated,

denounced, and rejected. By these means we have accumulated difficulties behind us, before us, and around us. Will the Duke of Wellington surmount these difficulties? Will he break up the system of gigantic plunder which is now in operation, or will he lend the influence of his powerful character in exacting the payment of paper taxes and paper debts, in heavy gold, out of the very bones of this oppressed and misgoverned nation?

This leads us to another subject, which, perhaps, it is better to leave to time to develop.

The Duke of Wellington succeeds to an unhappy station, at an unhappy time. The firm-hearted Castlereagh-the obstinate, bigoted Liverpool-the bold and talented Canning, each in their turn have sunk under the burthens to which the Duke of Wellington succeeds. The gentle, conciliating Goderich, took warning from the fate of his predecessors. In the dim vista of futurity, perhaps, he saw the dismal alternative of the revolutionary axe, or the cross-road grave. He was not a man to meet times like these. He therefore retired; and of him it may be truly said, that "no act of his political life became him like the leaving of it."

The Duke of Wellington is a different man. Born in camps, and bred up in the thunder of battles, it may be thought that he is a mere soldier. But the greatest soldiers have been the greatest men. A weak man never was a great soldier. Alfred and Marlborough, Cæsar and Alexander, Charlemagne

and Napoleon-these have been the first of soldiers, and the first of men. Therefore, the country has every thing to hope from the Duke of Wellington.

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The Duke of Wellington is remarkable for courage and decision. These are great qualities, but there is another quality more important still. Knowledge," says Lord Bacon, "is " is power." If the Duke of Wellington exhibits this quality upon this trying occasion of his country's need, and if he exhibits also a corresponding integrity at the same time, he will leave a name behind him greater than any Englishman has left before. But unless he has a just confidence in this respect, he will do well to retire. The sword will not cut the Gordian knot of difficulties which surround him. His well-earned laurels will fade in the intellectual Waterloo which is now before him.

A SCOTCH BANKER.

No. VI.

FAMINE.

June 15, 1828.

WHEN great principles are in operation, it is not difficult to foresee that great results must follow. The precise time at which such results will ensue, it is not indeed easy to calculate; because the action of collateral circumstances interferes, and sometimes retards and sometimes precipitates their operation.

If an act of Parliament had been passed to prohibit the cultivation of the earth, and if such prohibition had been enforced by the bayonet, there can be no doubt that a famine must have been the sudden and certain consequence of such wild and destructive legislation. Such an act of Parliament has not yet been passed, it is true; but one, very nearly analogous to it, has long been in operation. The act of 1819 has virtually rendered penal the cultivation of the ground. It has destroyed the reward of industry, and rendered it impossible for farmers to cultivate the earth without sustaining a positive loss in so doing. Why, then, has not famine ensued? Famine has been predicted for years by every man who has understood the necessary effect of forcing all the relations of society into an arbitrary con

formity with an unjust, an unsuitable, and longforgotten standard of value. Why, then, has not famine ensued?

Let us examine this important subject-let us inquire into the probability of an approaching famine-and into the causes which have hitherto tended to retard or counteract it.

Certainly, if the ancient metallic standard of value had been carried into effect in 1816, as was at first intended, an immediate famine must have ensued: the plough could not have been kept in motion. The sudden and certain fall of English prices to the continental level must of necessity have paralysed every hand. The pressure of the war burthens upon the reduced prices must have been equivalent to a warrant of ruin, upon every farmer who should dare to cultivate the earth. It was therefore found necessary to proceed slowly and cautiously, scattering the ruin gradually over a number of years, and relaxing our hand from time to time, in order to allow the farmers and productive classes a little leisure to breathe, and to recover their exhausted spirits. The poor wretches have therefore been played with, like mice in the jaws of over-gorged cats; they have been suffered to escape, as it were, one moment, in order to be again seized the next, and every time they have been seized, the talons have entered their very vitals.

It was thus that in 1816 the Government relaxed their hand, and by restoring cheap money they kept the plough in motion, and restored the prosperity of

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