must add to the price of our manufactures, and lessen their consumption among foreigners.  The decay of our trade must necessarily occasion a decrease of the public revenue; and a deficiency of our funds must either be made up by fresh taxes, which would only add to the calamity, or our national credit must be destroyed, by showing the public creditors the inability of the nation to repay them their principal money.—­Bounties had already been given for recruits which exceeded the year’s wages of the ploughman and reaper; and as these were exhausted, and husbandry stood still for want of hands, the manufacturers were next to be tempted to quit the anvil and the loom by higher offers.—­France, bankrupt France, had no such calamities impending over her; her distresses were great, but they were immediate and temporary; her want of credit preserved her from a great increase of debt, and the loss of her ultramarine dominions lessened her expenses.  Her colonies had, indeed, put themselves into the hands of the English; but the property of her subjects had been preserved by capitulations, and a way opened for making her those remittances which the war had before suspended, with as much security as in time of peace.—­Her armies in Germany had been hitherto prevented from seizing upon Hanover; but they continued to encamp on the same ground on which the first battle was fought; and, as it must ever happen from the policy of that government, the last troops she sent into the field were always found to be the best, and her frequent losses only served to fill her regiments with better soldiers.  The conquest of Hanover became therefore every campaign more probable.—­It is to be noted, that the French troops received subsistence only, for the last three years of the war; and that, although large arrears were due to them at its conclusion, the charge was the less during its continuance."[39]

If any one be willing to see to how much greater lengths the author carries these ideas, he will recur to the book.  This is sufficient for a specimen of his manner of thinking.  I believe one reflection uniformly obtrudes itself upon every reader of these paragraphs.  For what purpose, in any cause, shall we hereafter contend with France?  Can we ever flatter ourselves that we shall wage a more successful war?  If, on our part, in a war the most prosperous we ever carried on, by sea and by land, and in every part of the globe, attended with the unparalleled circumstance of an immense increase of trade and augmentation of revenue; if a continued series of disappointments, disgraces, and defeats, followed by public bankruptcy, on the part of France; if all these still leave her a gainer on the whole balance, will it not be downright frenzy in us ever to look her in the face again, or to contend with her any, even the most essential points, since victory and defeat, though by different ways, equally conduct us to our ruin?  Subjection to