4G 



May, 1820, upon the motion of the Marquis of Lansdown ; 

 — " That a select committee be appointed to enquire into 

 the means of extending and securing the Foreign trade 

 of the country" — expresses himself as follows ; — 



" The Noble Marquis also truly says, that this general 

 distress is to be ascribed to the extraordinary convulsions 

 in Europe during the last twenty years ; convulsions which 

 unhinged all the natural relations between nation and 

 nation, and even between man and man ; co7ivulsio)is which 

 have produced the most extensive effects both on nations 

 and individuals. Unquestionably, it was impossible but 

 that the instability of property, the creation of fictitious 

 capital, and all the other evils which arose during those 

 convulsions, should operate in the production of great dis- 

 tress in every country, long after the re-establishment of 

 peace should have caused the convulsions themselves to 

 cease. 



" But the peculiar circumstances of the times — that 

 to which I wish particularly to direct the attention of your 

 Lordships, and of the whole kingdom, is this, — that, great 

 as the distress is in every country in Europe, (and certainly 

 it prevails more or less in every country in Europe,) it is, 

 nevertheless, at the present moment greater in the United 

 States of America than it is in any country in Europe. 

 I desire any of your Lordships, or any other individuals 

 who may be disposed to ascribe the distress under which 

 we at present labor, to our debt, to excessive taxation, 

 to tithes, to the poor-rates, or to any cause of that nature, 

 to look at the United States of America; and 1 think that 

 they will then pause before they ascribe the distress which 

 we, or any of the other countries of Europe, are now suf- 

 fering, exclusively or principally, to any or all the causes 

 which I have mentioned." 



