These great and magnificent objects, which are as clearly pointed out
by Providence as the mission of the British nation--and which the
peculiar character of the Anglo-Saxon race so evidently qualified
it to discharge--as if it had been declared in thunders from Mount
Sinai, were in a great degree attained, though in an indirect way,
under the old constitution of England; and accordingly, while it
lasted, and was undisturbed in its action by local influences in the
heart of the empire, distress was comparatively unknown at home, and
disaffection was unheard of in our distant settlements. The proof of
this is decisive. The tables already given in the former part of this
paper demonstrate when distress at home and sedition abroad seriously
set in, when emigration advanced with the steps of a giant, and crime
began to increase ten times as fast as the numbers of the people--and
the poor-rates, despite all attempts to check them by fresh laws,
threatened to swallow all but the fortunes of the _millionnaires_ in
the kingdom. _It was after 1819 that all this took place._ Previous to
this, or at least previous to 1816, when the approaching great monetary
change of that year was intimated to the Bank, and the contraction of
the currency really began, distress at home was comparatively unknown,
and the most unbounded loyalty existed in our colonial settlements in
every part of the world. But from that date our policy at home and
abroad underwent a total change. Everything was changed with the change
in the ruling influences in the state. The words of the Christian
bishop who converted Clovis were acted upon to the letter--"Brulez ce
que vous avez adoré; adorez ce que vous avez brulé." The moneyed came
to supplant the territorial aristocracy, the interests of realised
capital to prevail over those of industry and wealth in the course
of formation. The Reform Bill confirmed and perpetuated this change,
by giving the moneyed class a decided majority of votes in the House
of Commons, and the House of Commons the practical government of the
country. From that moment suffering marked us for her own. Misery
spread in the heart of the empire; many of its most flourishing
settlements abroad went to ruin; and such disaffection prevailed in
all, that Government, foreseeing the dissolution of the empire, has
already taken steps to conceal the fall of the fabric by voluntarily
taking it to pieces.
Without going into details, unhappily too well known to all to require
any lengthened illustration, it may be sufficient to refer to three
circumstances which have not only immensely aggravated the internal
distress and external disaffection of the empire, but interrupted and
neutralised the influence of all those causes of relief provided for
us by nature, and which, under a just and equal policy, would have
entirely averted them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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