of France, was the very man to make an alliance with another Bonaparte for the purpose of carrying on a war to prevent the supremacy of the late Emperor of Russia.  So that we have been all round Europe and across it over and over again, and after a policy so distinguished, so pre-eminent, so long-continued, and so costly, I think we have a fair right—­I have, at least—­to ask those who are in favour of it to show us its visible result.  Europe is not at this moment, so far as I know, speaking of it broadly, and making allowance for certain improvements in its general civilization, more free politically than it was before.  The balance of power is like perpetual motion, or any of those impossible things which some men are always racking their brains and spending their time and money to accomplish.

We all know and deplore that at the present moment a larger number of the grown men of Europe are employed, and a larger portion of the industry of Europe is absorbed, to provide for, and maintain, the enormous armaments which are now on foot in every considerable Continental State.  Assuming, then, that Europe is not much better in consequence of the sacrifices we have made, let us inquire what has been the result in England, because, after all, that is the question which becomes us most to consider.  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.  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.