124 Europe al the Commencement of the Year 1831. CFsB. 



according to the advocates for the one-pound note, public prosperity is 

 to depend on two fictions paper-money, without funds and a mono- 

 poly price for corn. This is evidently against common-sense and the 

 nature of things ; and the cause must be sought elsewhere. 



The true cause of the public pressure is, beyond all doubt, the Taxation. 

 No nation was ever exposed to such tremendous imposts. The taxes 

 of England amount to not much less than seventy millions sterling 

 a-year ! Twenty millions to the government; twenty to the local expen- 

 diture, poor-rates, highways, watching, lighting, c. &c. ; and nearly 

 thirty millions to the interest of the national debt. We are to recollect 

 too, that this enormous sum is paid by a population of twelve millions, of 

 whom one half are females, and about one half of the remainder infants 

 and old people, classes from whose labour little can be raised ; in other 

 words, that about three millions of men pay upwards of twenty pounds 

 sterling each ! In America the taxation is nine shillings and threepence 

 a-head ! We certainly pay rather high for our privilege in living at 

 this side of the Atlantic. 



This frightful taxation must be diminished within reasonable bounds 

 by some means or other ; the fact is beyond all dispute. The people of 

 England cannot be rationally expected by any government to see them- 

 selves reduced to extremity by enormous imposts, for the vanity, the 

 improvidence, or the vice of others, let them bear what name they 

 may. It is monstrous to conceive, that about two hundred individuals, 

 three-fourths of whom are almost totally unknown as public servants, 

 and of whom not one fiftieth ever performed any service to the State 

 worth fifty pounds, should yearly be suffered to draw from the exigencies 

 of the country upwards of 600,000 ! 



It is monstrous that for fifteen years of Peace, and with the most 

 constant assurances from the Throne that there was not the slightest 

 probability of War with any power of Europe, * we should have been 

 keeping up an army of upwards of 100,000 men ! and paying for them 

 at three times the rate of any European power besides ; namely, eight 

 millions a year ! To the advocates of this most unwise expenditure we 

 unhesitatingly say, that this support of a standing army is among the 

 most extraordinary instances in which a people of common sense have 

 ever suffered themselves to be misled. 



In all countries a standing army is a declared evil. On the continent 

 the only result of the system has been to inspire kingdoms with mutual 

 jealousy, make military habits supersede those of all the purer, more 

 healthy, and more productive classes of society ; set a coxcomb with a 

 pair of epaulettes above the man of science, the merchant, the scholar, 

 the agriculturist, above every body who has any better employment 

 than strutting in moustaches and a laced coat. It prompts princely 

 cupidity to aggression on the neighbouring states, just as when every 

 man wore a sword, every word produced a deadly quarrel. It im- 

 poverishes the nation, and, after all, when the time of Invasion comes, 

 the only period in which it can be important for any people to have an 

 army, it is generally found inefficient, and the true defence of the 

 country is found in the multitude who have never received a shilling of 

 pay, and whose natural intrepidity serves their country better than all 

 the drilling and parading of their coxcomb hussars, lancers, life-guards, 

 and the whole haughty and costly crowd of encumbrances of tlie land. 

 But in England, with her Cliffs for an insurmountable rampart, and the 



