the enormous sum we invested in a war to retain those States as colonies of this Empire?  It never will be paid off.  Wherever you turn, you will find that the opening of markets, developing of new countries, introducing cotton cloth with cannon balls, are vain, foolish, and wretched excuses for wars, and ought not to be listened to for a moment by any man who understands the multiplication table or who can do the simplest sum in arithmetic.

Since the ‘Glorious Revolution’, since the enthronization of the great Norman territorial families, they have spent in wars, and we have worked for, about L2,000,000,000.  The interest on that is L100,000,000 per annum, which alone, to say nothing of the principal sum, is three or four times as much as the whole amount of your annual export trade from that time to this.  Therefore, if war has provided you with a trade, it has been at an enormous cost; but I think it is by no means doubtful that your trade would have been no less in amount and no less profitable had peace and justice been inscribed on your flag instead of conquest and the love of military renown.  But even in this year, 1858—­we have got a long way into the century—­we find that within the last seven years our public debt has greatly increased.  Whatever be the increase of our population, of our machinery, of our industry, of our wealth, still our national debt goes on increasing.  Although we have not a foot more territory to conserve, or an enemy in the world who dreams of attacking us, we find that our annual military expenses during the last twenty years have risen from L12,000,000 to L22,000,000.

Some people think that it is a good thing to pay a great revenue to the State.  Even so eminent a man as Lord John Russell is not without a delusion of this sort.  Lord John Russell, as you have heard, while speaking of me in flattering and friendly terms, says he is unfortunately obliged to differ from me frequently; therefore, I suppose, there is no particular harm in my saying that I am sometimes obliged to differ from him.  Some time ago he was a great star in the northern hemisphere, shining, not with unaccustomed, but with his usual brilliancy at Liverpool.  He made a speech in which there was a great deal to be admired, to a meeting composed, it was said, to a great extent of working-men; and in it he stimulated them to a feeling of pride in the greatness of their country and in being citizens of a State which enjoyed a revenue of L100,000,000 a year, which included the revenues of the United Kingdom and of British India.  But I think it would have been far more to the purpose if he could have congratulated the working-men of Liverpool on this vast Empire being conducted in an orderly manner, on its laws being well administered and well obeyed, its shores sufficiently defended, its people prosperous and happy, on a revenue of L20,000,000.  The State, indeed, of which Lord John Russell is a part, may enjoy a revenue of L100,000,000, but I am afraid the working-men can only be said to enjoy it in the sense in which men not very choice in their expressions say that for a long time they have enjoyed ’very bad health’.