They can neither bring back a drop of the blood that has been shed, nor recover a shilling of the treasure that has been wasted. If the expenses of the war are not a burden to the people, which must sink it according to their weight, why do not government take the whole of this thriving concern into their own hands, and pay the national debt out of the Droits of Admiralty? In short, the way to ascertain this point is, by the old method of reductio ad absurdum: Suppose we had to pay the expenses of such another peace-establishment and such another war. Who does not see that they would eat up the whole resources of the country, as the present peace-establishment and actual debt do just one half?
Speeches in Parliament on the Distresses of the Country, by Mr. Western and Mr. Brougham.
(concluded.)
"Come, let us leave off children's play, and go to push-pin."
The war has wasted the resources of the country in foolery, which the country has now to pay for in a load of taxes on its remaining resources, its actual produce and labour. The tax-gatherer is a government-machine that takes sixty-five millions a-year from the bankrupt pockets of the nation, to give to those who have brought it into that situation; who takes so much from the necessaries of life belonging to the poor, to add to the superfluities of the rich; who adds so much to the hard labour of the working part of the community, to "relieve the killing languor and over-laboured lassitude of those who have nothing to do;" who, in short, out of the grinding poverty and ceaseless toil of those who pay the taxes, enables those who receive them to live in luxury and idleness.
