Financial Reform. 69 



who supported the shippers with his reciprocal right hand, and, voting for 

 the one-pound-note-suppression act, sunk the bankers with his left; a 

 statesman who did not know that the manufacturer supports the shipper, 

 that the banker supports them both, and that a paper circulation is the 

 life of the business of a banker : therefore shippers are advised not to 

 continue to pay the old harbour dues, wages, and victualling expences, 

 but to lay up their vessels until the rights of the banker are restored to 

 him, and the trade opened to the East Indies, when they will all be wanted. 

 And as merchant vessels may be sold in foreign countries, or chartered to 

 foreigners in the carrying trade in other quarters of the world, it is fitting 

 that our vessels of war, which, from their superiority of size, security, 

 and management, can be navigated at an inferior expence, should now be 

 brought into operation at home, for the reduction of the general burthens 

 of the nation. 



We shall be told that these ships belong to the King, that kings cannot 

 descend to be merchants, and foreigners will say that we are a nation of 

 shopkeepers. To this the answer is, that a nation of shopkeepers is better 

 than a nation of avaricious lords and starving slaves ; that although he 

 has recently given away a frigate worth forty thousand pounds to the 

 Prussian tyrant of the Holy Alliance, it is yet true that these ships do not 

 belong to the King ; and further, that if an enormous weight of taxation 

 be not, by some means, removed from the energies of the nation, it is too 

 probable that the people of England will concur with De Potter, of 

 Belgium, that economy cannot exist under a monarchical form of 

 government. 



The army next requires revision. It is the first result of Parliamentary 

 reform, that this country shall no longer be governed by the bayonet ; and 

 therefore the people of England will now expect a reduction of the stand- 

 ing army to the number of soldiers which is really required to garrison 

 the fortifications of the kingdom. For this service, ten thousand men are 

 a large peace establishment in this small island. In the United States of 

 America (a country spreading over twenty-six great territories), the entire 

 standing army consists of a force of not more than five thousand men ; 

 for in that enlightened and free country it never enters the mind of man 

 that soldiers are supported to fire upon the people who clothe and pay 

 them. Owing to our insular situation, secure from the inroads of the 

 barbarous northern nations,* we require very little military precaution j for 

 the straits of Dover form a sufficient standing army. Nor have we any 

 reason to be anxious about the imaginary balance of power in Europe. 

 The preponderance of Russia' is a chimera to us : the neighbouring 

 nations, whose interest, liberty, and political existence are at stake, will 

 regulate the balance without us. A neutral, dignified, and distant policy 

 becomes this country, Our loans and superabundant wealth give us 

 more influence than all our military fame ; and as money is the sinews of 

 war, so the balance of trade is the real balance of power. At home, a 

 well regulated police is the only mode of civic coertion which now will be 

 tolerated by the people of England. We propose, therefore, at once to 

 disband all our cavalry; for this department of the service is doubly 

 oppressive in a populous country not able to support twenty thousand idle 

 horses of parade. The troops stationed in our colonial dependencies ought 



* Always excepting the Scotch. 



