You will always bear in mind, my dear Sir, that I am not considering whether, if the common enemy of the quiet of Europe had not forced us to take up arms in our own defence, the spring-tide of our prosperity might not have flowed higher than the mark at which it now stands.  That consideration is connected with the question of the justice and the necessity of the war.  It is a question which I have long since discussed.  I am now endeavoring to ascertain whether there exists, in fact, any such necessity as we hear every day asserted, to furnish a miserable pretext for counselling us to surrender at discretion our conquests, our honor, our dignity, our very independence, and, with it, all that is dear to man.  It will be more than sufficient for that purpose, if I can make it appear that we have been stationary during the war.  What, then, will be said, if, in reality, it shall be proved that there is every indication of increased and increasing wealth, not only poured into the grand reservoir of the national capital, but diffused through all the channels of all the higher classes, and giving life and activity, as it passes, to the agriculture, the manufactures, the commerce, and the navigation of the country?

The Finance Committee which has been appointed in this session has already made two reports.  Every conclusion that I had before drawn, as you know, from my own observation, I have the satisfaction of seeing there confirmed by that great public authority.  Large as was the sum by which the committee of 1791 found the estimate of 1786 to have been exceeded in the actual produce of four years of peace, their own estimate has been exceeded during the war by a sum more than one third larger.  The same taxes have yielded more than half a million beyond their calculation.  They yielded this, notwithstanding the stoppage of the distilleries, against which, you may remember, I privately remonstrated.  With an allowance for that defalcation, they have yielded sixty thousand pounds annually above the actual average of the preceding four years of peace.  I believe this to have been without parallel in all former wars.  If regard be had to the great and unavoidable burdens of the present war, I am confident of the fact.

But let us descend to particulars.  The taxes which go by the general name of Assessed Taxes comprehend the whole, or nearly the whole, domestic establishment of the rich.  They include some things which belong to the middling, and even to all but the very lowest classes.  They now consist of the duties on houses and windows, on male servants, horses, and carriages.  They did also extend to cottages, to female servants, wagons, and carts used in husbandry, previous to the year 1792,—­when, with more enlightened policy, at the moment that the possibility of war could not be out of the contemplation of any statesman, the wisdom of Parliament confined them to their present objects.  I shall give the gross assessment for five years, as I find it in the Appendix to the Second Report of your committee.