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¬gent councils, increasing for the time their mili- tary establishments, and keeping within their own territories in a state of impregnable defence. ¬" But supposing the views of other nations to have been different, or that differing from yours in opinion, your mediation had been re- jected, you were completely independent of them all, and as far therefore as your own country was concerned nothing ought to have removed you from a system of defence. You are an island with immense naval and military strength. Within yourselves you were secure — and you ought not, though you were involved in war, to have carried it beyond your own limits. — A contrary system could not have been contem- plated by men of common discretion without foreseeing a ruinous expense ; but nothing seems to have occurred to your most sagacious finan- ciers beyond the simple question of the compe- tency of the new taxes to pay the interest of additional loans ; their bearings upon the springs of national industry and prosperous commerce ¬appear- ¬
¬appear
