This opens a subject on which every true lover of his country, and, at
this crisis, every friend to the liberties of Europe, and of social
order in every country, must dwell and expatiate with delight. I mean to
wind up all my proofs of our astonishing and almost incredible
prosperity with the valuable information given to the Secret Committee
of the Lords by the Inspector-General. And here I am happy that I can
administer an antidote to all despondence from the same dispensary from
which the first dose of poison was supposed to have come. The report of
that committee is generally believed to have derived much benefit from
the labors of the same noble lord who was said, as the author of the
pamphlet of 1795, to have led the way in teaching us to place all our
hope on that very experiment which he afterwards declared in his place
to have been from the beginning utterly without hope. We have now his
authority to say, that, as far as our resources were concerned, the
experiment was equally without necessity.
"It appears," as the committee has very justly and satisfactorily
observed, "by the accounts of the value of the imports and exports for
the last twenty years, produced by Mr. Irving, Inspector-General of
Imports and Exports, that the demands for cash to be sent abroad"
(which, by the way, including the loan to the Emperor, was nearly one
third less sent to the Continent of Europe than in the Seven Years' War)
.
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