It is for us at present to recollect what we have been, and to consider what, if we please, we may be still.  At the period of those wars our principal strength was found in the resolution of the people, and that in the resolution of a part only of the then whole, which bore no proportion to our existing magnitude.  England and Scotland were not united at the beginning of that mighty struggle.  When, in the course of the contest, they were conjoined, it was in a raw, an ill-cemented, an unproductive, union.  For the whole duration of the war, and long after, the names and other outward and visible signs of approximation rather augmented than diminished our insular feuds.  They were rather the causes of new discontents and new troubles than promoters of cordiality and affection.  The now single and potent Great Britain was then not only two countries, but, from the party heats in both, and the divisions formed in each of them, each of the old kingdoms within itself, in effect, was made up of two hostile nations.  Ireland, now so large a source of the common opulence and power, and which, wisely managed, might be made much more beneficial and much more effective, was then the heaviest of the burdens.  An army, not much less than forty thousand men, was drawn from the general effort, to keep that kingdom in a poor, unfruitful, and resourceless subjection.

Such was the state of the empire.  The state of our finances was worse, if possible.  Every branch of the revenue became less productive after the Revolution.  Silver, not as now a sort of counter, but the body of the current coin, was reduced so low as not to have above three parts in four of the value in the shilling.  In the greater part the value hardly amounted to a fourth.  It required a dead expense of three millions sterling to renew the coinage.  Public credit, that great, but ambiguous principle, which has so often been predicted as the cause of our certain ruin, but which for a century has been the constant companion, and often the means, of our prosperity and greatness, had its origin, and was cradled, I may say, in bankruptcy and beggary.  At this day we have seen parties contending to be admitted, at a moderate premium, to advance eighteen millions to the exchequer.  For infinitely smaller loans, the Chancellor of the Exchequer of that day, Montagu, the father of public credit, counter-securing the state by the appearance of the city with the Lord Mayor of London at his side, was obliged, like a solicitor for an hospital, to go cap in hand from shop to shop, to borrow an hundred pound, and even smaller sums.  When made up in driblets as they could, their best securities were at an interest of twelve per cent.  Even the paper of the Bank (now at par with cash, and generally preferred to it) was often at a discount of twenty per cent.  By this the state of the rest may be judged.