I am afraid, my dear Sir, that I have tired you with these dull, though important details.  But we are upon a subject which, like some of a higher nature, refuses ornament, and is contented with conveying instruction.  I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in those perverted minds which have no delight but in contemplating the supposed distress and predicting the immediate ruin of their country.  These birds of evil presage at all times have grated our ears with their melancholy song; and, by some strange fatality or other, it has generally happened that they have poured forth their loudest and deepest lamentations at the periods of our most abundant prosperity.  Very early in my public life I had occasion to make myself a little acquainted with their natural history.  My first political tract in the collection which a friend has made of my publications is an answer to a very gloomy picture of the state of the nation, which was thought to have been drawn by a statesman of some eminence in his time.  That was no more than the common spleen of disappointed ambition:  in the present day I fear that too many are actuated by a more malignant and dangerous spirit.  They hope, by depressing our minds with a despair of our means and resources, to drive us, trembling and unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom, from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in strict concert and cooeperation.  If, with the report of your Finance Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars.  Nor must we forget that they are unwearied agitators, bold assertors, dexterous sophisters.  Proof must be accumulated upon proof, to silence them.  With this view, I shall now direct your attention to some other striking and unerring indications of our flourishing condition; and they will, in general, be derived from other sources, but equally authentic:  from other reports and proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, all which unite with wonderful force of consent in the same general result.  Hitherto we have seen the superfluity of our capital discovering itself only in procuring superfluous accommodation and enjoyment, in our houses, in our furniture, in our establishments, in our eating and drinking, our clothing, and our public diversions:  we shall now see it more beneficially employed in improving our territory itself:  we shall see part of our present opulence, with provident care, put out to usury for posterity.