against us; that is, one million in the ceasing of gain, the other in the increase of expenditure.  But none of the author’s promises or projects could have prevented this misfortune; and, thank God, we do not want him or them to relieve us from it; although, if his friends should now come into power, I doubt not but they will be ready to take credit for any increase of trade or excise, that may arise from the happy circumstance of a good harvest.

This connects with his loud laments and melancholy prognostications concerning the high price of the necessaries of life and the products of labor.  With all his others, I deny this fact; and I again call upon him to prove it.  Take average and not accident, the grand and first necessary of life is cheap in this country; and that too as weighed, not against labor, which is its true counterpoise, but against money.  Does he call the price of wheat at this day, between 32 and 40 shillings per quarter in London dear?[64] He must know that fuel (an object of the highest order in the necessaries of life, and of the first necessity in almost every kind of manufacture) is in many of our provinces cheaper than in any part of the globe.  Meat is on the whole not excessively dear, whatever its price may be at particular times and from particular accidents.  If it has had anything like an uniform rise, this enhancement may easily be proved not to be owing to the increase of taxes, but to uniform increase of consumption and of money.  Diminish the latter, and meat in your markets will be sufficiently cheap in account, but much dearer in effect:  because fewer will be in a condition to buy.  Thus your apparent plenty will be real indigence.  At present, even under temporary disadvantages, the use of flesh is greater here than anywhere else; it is continued without any interruption of Lents or meagre days; it is sustained and growing even with the increase of our taxes.  But some have the art of converting even the signs of national prosperity into symptoms of decay and ruin.  And our author, who so loudly disclaims popularity, never fails to lay hold of the most vulgar popular prejudices and humors, in hopes to captivate the crowd.  Even those peevish dispositions which grow out of some transitory suffering, those passing clouds which float in our changeable atmosphere, are by him industriously figured into frightful shapes, in order first to terrify, and then to govern the populace.

It was not enough for the author’s purpose to give this false and discouraging picture of the state of his own country.  It did not fully answer his end, to exaggerate her burdens, to depreciate her successes, and to vilify her character.  Nothing had been done, unless the situation of France were exalted in proportion as that of England had been abased.  The reader will excuse the citation I make at length from his book; he outdoes himself upon this occasion.  His confidence is indeed unparalleled, and altogether of the heroic cast:—­