But that one system was amply sufficient to break down the most wisely-conceived system of finance, to ruin the most flourishing revenue, to render beggarly the richest nation, to destroy the greatest empire. It is the system, originating with the Roman empire, as a necessary and just consequence of its universal conquest, of universal free-trade—a system which ruined the empire. It is the more dangerous that it recommends itself to the people in the first instance by the alluring prospect of cheapening everything, of making money daily go farther, rendering every one apparently richer and more comfortable than he was before. It is readily adopted by the shopkeeping and trading class, because it enables them, in the first instance, to purchase the goods at a less cost; forgetting that if they buy cheap they must also sell cheap, and that their customers’ means of payment are melting away from the effects of that very cheapness. It is long, however, before this truth, how obvious soever, is generally understood. It is by slow degrees, and after much suffering only, that it is discovered that this system of general cheapening does not stop short with people’s _expenditure_; that it speedily comes to affect their _incomes_ also, and that in a still greater degree; that, if shopkeepers buy cheap, they must sell little or sell cheap also; that wages must fall with the decline in the price of commodities; and that the last condition of the people is worse than the first. But while this great and eternal truth is in the course of being brought home to the nation by suffering, the national pre-eminence is lost, the national security is endangered, the national spirit is weakened. Multitudes become desperate in regard to their own and their country’s fortunes, from the scenes of suffering and distress which they perpetually see around them; the selfish feelings acquire a fatal preponderance, from the general experienced impossibility of indulging in the generous. Meanwhile the national income melts away under the effects of the general cheapening of the remuneration of industry—all steady or foreseeing system of finance is abandoned, and every successive Government, like a needy spendthrift, deems itself happy if it can get through the year without a financial crisis, never bestowing a thought on the future, either as regards the national security, its finances, or its means of defence.