588 England at the Close of 1831. [Dec. 



intriguing to get them banished, that they might succeed to the pen- 

 sions. The sudden influx of money into Rome on the conquest of the 

 Asiatic provinces, overset Rome, tui'ned the proud republic into a 

 despotism, the people into a nation of riotous paupers, and even the 

 noble possessors of this luckless wealth into miserable dependants on tlie 

 court, to protect their money ; harassed victims of the avarice of the 

 court, which cut off their heads to seize their money ; or desperate 

 criminals and debauchees, in the determination to have at least the 

 wasting of it, in their own way. 



It is scarcely a century, since England felt the mischief of the sudden 

 Indian fortunes — in the rise of rents, in extraordinary parliamentary 

 corruption, and in the impoverishment of a large class of her most 

 valuable subjects, the squires and the lower nobility. Men who had 

 gons out to India with half-a-crown in their pockets, returned with 

 half a million. How it was gathered, was seldom the question ; the 

 only thing asked by the owners was, how it was to be laid out — by the 

 squiredom, how it was to be rivalled — and by every body else, how it was 

 to be shai'ed. The coming of one of those English nabobs into a neigh- 

 bourhood instantly raised the price of land, the price of provisions, the 

 scorn of the peasantry and populace for the revenues of their old 

 masters — and the envy of those old masters, for the splendid entertain- 

 ments, equipages, and attendance of the nabobs. 



From that hour, the ancient country life of England had received a 

 shock. Character, long residence, ancient inheritance, and hereditary 

 protection, had been the acknowledged claims of the gentry to the re- 

 spect of their tenants. But a new god of their idolatry was now set 

 up, and the purse superseded every thing. The man who could pay 

 most handsomely was the first man ; and money, of all stimulants the 

 basest, was the grand incentive to the popular homage. In some in- 

 stances the country gentlemen attempted to encounter the nabob in his 

 own strong-hold, and many an acre was shorn of its oaks and elms to 

 purchase the service of plate, or the shewy stud that was to make battle 

 against the glittering plunderer of a Nabob of Oude, or a Rajah of 

 Tanjore. But the rivalry generally ended in the King's Bench, or a 

 flight to the continent ; while the estate, old as William the Norman, was 

 put out to nurse. 



A deeper evil came in the train of this money. Some of those sons of 

 fortune were sons of rapine too ; their purses had been made up by the 

 robbery of the Indians, and even the ten thousand miles of ocean between 

 England and the Ganges, were not broad enough to prevent the cries of 

 the robbed from following the robber. To defend their plunder, or 

 make defenders for it, it was necessary to influence parliament ; and the 

 result was, that same purchase of seats, which has so long hung upon 

 the reputation of the senate, and which now forms the chief argument 

 for a total change in the representation. 



Yet what was the consequence of the whole influx ? The Indian for- 

 tunes fled : in a few years their possessors were either bankrupt, or 

 banished, or dead. Their money had spread over the general revenues, 

 and was scarcely felt in the great scale of the nation. But the evil re- 

 mained. The increase in the style of living, in the price of land, in the 

 price of provisions, the general habits of extravagance, and the general 

 parliamentary traffic remained. Neither the farmer nor the landed pro- 

 prietor was the better for the influx, but the worse; for the farmer was 

 forced to pay an additional rent in proportion to the price of his pro- 



