has wisely turned from the culture to the sports of the field,—­if the theatres are as rich and as well filled, and greater and at a higher price than ever,—­and (what is more important than all) if it is plain, from the treasures which are spread over the soil or confided to the winds and the seas, that there are as many who are indulgent to their propensities of parsimony as others to their voluptuous desires, and that the pecuniary capital grows instead of diminishing,—­on what ground are we authorized to say that a nation gambolling in an ocean of superfluity is undone by want?  With what face can we pretend that they who have not denied any one gratification to any one appetite have a right to plead poverty in order to famish their virtues and to put their duties on short allowance? that they are to take the law from an imperious enemy, and can contribute no longer to the honor of their king, to the support of the independence of their country, to the salvation of that Europe which, if it falls, must crush them with its gigantic ruins?  How can they affect to sweat and stagger and groan under their burdens, to whom the mines of Newfoundland, richer than those of Mexico and Peru, are now thrown in as a make-weight in the scale of their exorbitant opulence?  What excuse can they have to faint, and creep, and cringe, and prostrate themselves at the footstool of ambition and crime, who, during a short, though violent struggle, which they have never supported with the energy of men, have amassed more to their annual accumulation than all the well-husbanded capital that enabled their ancestors, by long and doubtful and obstinate conflicts, to defend and liberate and vindicate the civilized world?  But I do not accuse the people of England.  As to the great majority of the nation, they have done whatever, in their several ranks and conditions and descriptions, was required of them by their relative situations in society:  and from those the great mass of mankind cannot depart, without the subversion of all public order.  They look up to that government which they obey that they may be protected.  They ask to be led and directed by those rulers whom Providence and the laws of their country have set over them, and under their guidance to walk in the ways of safety and honor.  They have again delegated the greatest trust which they have to bestow to those faithful representatives who made their true voice heard against the disturbers and destroyers of Europe.  They suffered, with unapproving acquiescence, solicitations, which they had in no shape desired, to an unjust and usurping power, whom they had never provoked, and whose hostile menaces they did not dread.  When the exigencies of the public service could only be met by their voluntary zeal, they started forth with an ardor which outstripped the wishes of those who had injured them by doubting whether it might not be necessary to have recourse to compulsion.  They have in all things reposed an enduring, but not an