Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/194

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¬and increase in proportion, the whole of which would circulate amongst your manufacturers and traders, who lost their best customers when agriculture declined. ¬" You are not, perhaps, aware of the propor- tional ascendancy of land over other sources of wealth and employment. — But speaking gene- rally, and not from any positive calculation, a tax upon property in England would bear upon land and houses, as opposed to trades and manu- factures, in the proportion of above seven to three; and in the numbers of actual contri- butors of above jour to two. — This disproportion marks besides only the pre-eminence of agri- culture in the ordinary condition of a nation ; but if England were in your exhausted condi- tion, and were called upon for a mighty exertion, you would see how her genius would triumph. — When pressed down with a weight which threatened destruction, her energies would rebound, and raise her as much higher than her former elevation, as difficulties appeared ¬to ¬