1822.] 
dependance was insecure?) Was ever 
nation before so mad as to become the 
willing instruments of the jealousy, 
envy, and hatred, of its own rulers; 
and, for the purpose of removing that 
chief, so infatuated as to mortgage 
the whole of its rentals to raise the si- 
news of war against that individual, 
with whom they had no manner of 
concern? Such has, however, been 
Ahe fact,—the delirium is past,—the 
wretched people are fast discovering 
the arts by which they were duped,— 
but their property is transferred! They 
not only exhausted themselves by si- 
multaneous taxation, but they pledged 
all their real property to public cre- 
ditors, Jews, and money-lenders, for 
nearly, if not quite, as much money 
as it is worth; and they are now 
writhing in all the horrors of infatuated 
men who have lost their estates in a fit 
of delirium at the gaming-table. Their 
estates are gone, and their only equi- 
valent is the dead body of Napoleon 
at St. Helena! 
fs not this a new situation? Was 
such a picture of national folly ever 
before presented to the world? Will 
any antiquated doctrines meet it? Can 
any principles of political economy, or 
any arithmetical legerdemain, restore 
an estate to a man who has spent it? 
Did any whining about distress ever 
induce a mortgagee to restore title- 
deeds, and abate his mortgage? It is 
nothing to him that the owner was in- 
fatuated when he borrowed his money, 
and he will be paid his interest or fore- 
close ; or if he does not get the one, 
and finds himself unable to do the 
other, he will consider himself as swin- 
dled, and the borrowers as swindlers ! 
It is nothing to him ‘hat the borrowers 
wasted the money which he lent in 
gratifying bad passions; and that, after 
their game is over, they find that the 
dead body of Napoleon is not a valua- 
ble equivalent! 
En passant it must not be concealed, 
that both parties in a moral sense are 
equally culpable, for each of them 
pledged their lives and fortunes to 
Sustain an absurd and wicked contest; 
but it so happens, that the law sup- 
ports the mortgagee, while it leaves 
the land and house owners to shift for 
themselves, and to sink to the level in 
society to which their improvidence or 
political gullibility have reduced them. 
It is the shifts of the proprietors 
which create the difficulties. During 
2 
Public Distresses and Relief. 5 
the war they indemnified themselves by 
raising their rents, and therefore did 
not feel the weight of the mortgage ; 
and they were enabled to do this by 
the enormous purchases of the govern- 
ment, and by reducing the value of the 
currency in issues of paper. But 
now, when the government has ceased 
to expend its thirty millions in agricul- 
tural produce, and the currency has 
partly returned to its standard value, 
two results take place fatal to the de- 
luded proprietors; one that, in cases 
where he has not let his property on 
lease, the tenant cannot pay those 
factitious war-rents which were de- 
rived from the two sources. above- 
named; or that, in cases where he has 
let on lease, the farmer is paying out 
‘of his own capital, and has been ruin- 
ed, or is on the verge of ruin. Itis 
found, also, that the depreciation of 
the currency, and the high prices of 
produce, ruined the labouring classes, 
who paid treble prices, while they 
got only double; and that these have 
now to be repaid out of the land, in 
poor-rates, the amount of those earn- 
ings out of which they were in effect 
cheated during the war. This charge, 
and the direct and indirect -taxation, 
operating on the tenant, allow him 
therefore to pay no rent to the land- 
lord; and it cannot be otherwise, see- 
ing that annuities equal to the rentals 
have been sold by the landlords to ena- 
ble former administrations to carry, on 
wars, first against abstract principles, 
and next against the right of a foreign 
nation to choose its own chief. 
In truth, in the purchases of govern- 
ment the landlords were at the time 
receiving, in higher rents, the mort- 
gages of their estates. They foolishly 
thought these high rents so much gain; 
but, in fact, as from this cause a 
landlord got 1,000/. instead of 500/. 
a-year, he was in effect incurring a 
mortgage upon his estate by a round- 
about course of the extra 500/.; and: 
if he spent the extra 500/. he was like 
any other spendthrift, and the sum of 
all the extra rentals which he got du- 
ring the war constitute the greater 
portion of his present public mortgage. 
—A still greater absurdity was com- 
mitted by the purchasers of estates, 
while the annual public mortgages were 
added to the rents. Thus, if the go- 
vernment purchases and the paper- 
currency raised the rental of an estate 
from 5007. to a nominal 1,000/. per 
annum, 
