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Peter Plymley's Letters, and selected essays by Sydney Smith
page 109 of 166 (65%)
still, manufactures perish, Ireland is more and more irritated,
India is threatened, fresh taxes are accumulated upon the wretched
people, the war is carried on without it being possible to conceive
any one single object which a rational being can propose to himself
by its continuation; and in the midst of this unparalleled insanity
we are told that the Continent is to be reconquered by the want of
rhubarb and plums. A better spirit than exists in the English
people never existed in any people in the world: it has been
misdirected, and squandered upon party purposes in the most
degrading and scandalous manner; they have been led to believe that
they were benefiting the commerce of England by destroying the
commerce of America, that they were defending their Sovereign by
perpetuating the bigoted oppression of their fellow-subjects; their
rulers and their guides have told them that they would equal the
vigour of France by equalling her atrocity; and they have gone on
wasting that opulence, patience, and courage, which, if husbanded by
prudent and moderate counsels, might have proved the salvation of
mankind. The same policy of turning the good qualities of
Englishmen to their own destruction, which made Mr. Pitt omnipotent,
continues his power to those who resemble him only in his vices;
advantage is taken of the loyalty of Englishmen to make them meanly
submissive; their piety is turned into persecution, their courage
into useless and obstinate contention; they are plundered because
they are ready to pay, and soothed into asinine stupidity because
they are full of virtuous patience. If England must perish at last,
so let it be: that event is in the hands of God; we must dry up our
tears and submit. But that England should perish swindling and
stealing; that it should perish waging war against lazar houses and
hospitals; that it should perish persecuting with monastic bigotry;
that it should calmly give itself up to be ruined by the flashy
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