Representative British Orations Volume 3 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
History
Representative British Orations Volume 3 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
Speeches, addresses, etc., English
Add up the interest of that 130,000,000_l._ for all this time, and how
long do you think it will be before there will be a profit on the trade
with the United States which will repay the enormous sum we invested
in a war to retain those States as colonies of this empire? It never
will be paid off. Wherever you turn, you will find that the opening of
markets, developing of new countries, introducing cotton cloth with
cannon balls, are vain, foolish, and wretched excuses for wars, and
ought not to be listened to for a moment by any man who understands the
multiplication table, or who can do the simplest sum in arithmetic.
Since the “Glorious Revolution,” since the enthronization of the
great Norman territorial families, they have spent in wars, and we
have worked for, about 2,000,000,000_l._ The interest on that is
100,000,000_l._ per annum, which alone, to say nothing of the principal
sum, is three or four times as much as the whole amount of your annual
export trade from that time to this.[37]
Therefore, if war has provided you with a trade, it has been at an
enormous cost; but I think it is by no means doubtful that your trade
would have been no less in amount and no less profitable, had peace and
justice been inscribed on your flag instead of conquest and the love
of military renown. But even in this year, 1858—we have got a long way
into the century,—we find that within the last seven years our public
debt has greatly increased. Whatever be the increase of our population,
of our machinery, of our industry, of our wealth, still our national
debt goes on increasing.[38] Although we have not a foot more territory
to conserve, or an enemy in the world who dreams of attacking us, we
find that our annual military expenses during the last twenty years
have risen from 12,000,000_l._ to 22,000,000_l._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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