advance and prompt payment; hence publick credit is faken; and hence great number's find their profit in prolonging the war.

It is odd, that among a free trading people, as we call ourselves, there fhould fo many be found to clofe in with those counfels, who have been ever averse from all overtures towards a peace: but yet there is no great mystery in the matter. Let any man obferve the equipages in this town, he shall find the greater number of thofe, who make a figure, to be a fpecies of men quite different from any, that were ever known before the revolution; confifting either of generals and colonels, or of those, whose whole fortunes lie in funds and stocks; so that power, which according to the old maxim was used to follow land, is now gone over to money; and the country gentleman is in the condition of a young heir, out of whofe eftate a fcrivener receives half the rents for intereft, and hath a mortgage on the whole; and is therefore always ready to feed his vices and extravagancies, while there is any thing left. So that if the war continue fome years longer, a landed man will be little better B 3 than

than a farmer of a rack-rent to the army and to the publick funds.

It may perhaps be worth enquiring, from what beginnings and by what steps we have been brought into this desperate condition and in search of this we muft run up as high as the revolution.

:

Most of the nobility and gentry, who invited over the prince of Orange, or attended him in his expedition, were true lovers of their country and its conftitution in church and state; and were brought to yield to those breaches in the fucceffion of the crown, out of a regard to the neceffity of the kingdom and the fafety of the people, which did, and could only, make them lawful; but without intention of drawing fuch a practice into precedent, or making it a standing measure by which to proceed in all times to come; and therefore we find their counfels ever tended to keep things, as much as poffible, in the old courfe. But foon after, and under ang fett of men, who had nothing to lose, and had neither borne the burthen nor heat of the day, found means to whisper in the king's ear, that the principles of loyalty in

the

the church of England were wholly inconfiftent with the revolution. Hence began the early practice of careffing the Diffenters, reviling the universities, as maintainers of arbitrary power, and reproaching the clergy with the doctrines of divine right, paffive obedience, and non-refiftance. At the fame time, in order to faften wealthy people to the new government, they proposed those pernicious expedients of borrowing money by vaft premiums, and at exorbitant intereft: a practice as old as Eumenes, one of Alexander's captains, who, fetting up for himself after the death of his mafter, perfuaded his principal officers to lend him great fums, after which they were forced to follow him for their own fecurity.

This introduced a number of new dextrous men into business and credit. It was argued, that the war could not last above two or three campaigns; and that it was easier for the fubjects to raise a fund for paying intereft, than to tax them annually to the full expence of the war. Several perfons, who had fmall or incumbered eftates, fold them, and turned their moB 4

ney

ney into thofe funds, to great advantage: merchants, as well as other monied men, finding trade was dangerous, purfued the fame method. But the war continuing, and growing more expenfive, taxes were increased, and funds multiplied every year, till they have arrived at the monftrous height we now behold them; and that, which was at firft a corruption, is at last grown neceffary, and what every good fubject muft now fall in with, although he may be allowed to wish it might foon have an end; because it is with a kingdom as with a private fortune, where every new incumbrance adds a double weight. By this means the wealth of a nation, that ufed to be reckoned by the value of land, is now computed by the rife and fall of ftocks: and although the foundation of credit be ftill the fame, and upon a bottom that can never be fhaken, and although all intereft be duly paid by the publick; yet, through the contrivance and cunning of frock-jobbers, there hath been brought in fuch a complication of knavery and cozenage, fuch a mystery of iniquity, and fuch an unintelligible jargon of terms

to

to involve it in, as were never known in any other age or country in the world. I have heard it affirmed by perfons fkilled in these calculations, that if the funds appropriated to the payment of intereft and annuities were added to the yearly taxes, and the four-fhilling aid ftrictly exacted in all counties of the kingdom, it would very near, if not fully, fupply the occafions of the war; at least fuch a part as, in the opinion of very able perfons, had been at that time prudent not to exceed. For I make it a question, Whether any wife prince or ftate in the continuance of a war, which was not purely defenfive, or immediately at his own door, did ever propose that his expence fhould perpetually exceed what he was able to impofe annually upon his fubjects? Neither if the war laft many years longer, do I fee how the next generation will be able to begin another; which in the courfe of human affairs, and according to the various interefts and ambition of princes, may be as neceffary for them, as it hath been for us. And if our fathers had left us as deeply, involved, as we are likely to leave our children,