Senator Snip congratulated, some years ago, that preciously honourable "Collective _Wisdom_" of which he is a most worthy Member; Snip congratulated it on the success of the late war in creating capital! Snip is, you must know, a great _feelosofer_, and a not less great _feenanceer_. Snip cited, as a proof of the great and glorious effects of paper-money, the new and fine houses in London, the new streets and squares, the new roads, new canals and bridges. Snip was not, I dare say, aware that this same paper-money had destroyed forty mansion houses in this Vale of Avon, and had taken away all the goods, all the substance, of the little gentry and of the labouring class. Snip was not, I dare say, aware that this same paper-money had, in this one Vale of only thirty miles long, dilapidated, and, in some cases, wholly demolished, nine out of twenty-nine even of the parsonage houses. I told Snip at the time (1821), that paper-money could create no valuable thing. I begged Snip to bear this in mind. I besought all my readers, and particularly Mr. Mathias Atwood (one of the members for _Lowther_-town), not to believe that paper-money ever did, or ever could, _create_ anything of any value. I besought him to look well into the matter, and assured him that he would find that though paper-money could _create_ nothing of value, it was able to _transfer_ everything of value; able to strip a little gentry; able to dilapidate even parsonage houses; able to rob gentlemen of their estates, and labourers of their Sunday-coats and their barrels of beer; able to snatch the dinner from the board of the reaper or the mower, and to convey it to the barrack-table of the Hessian or Hanoverian grenadier; able to take away the wool, that ought to give warmth to the bodies of those who rear the sheep, and put it on the backs of those who carry arms to keep the poor, half-famished shepherds in order! I have never been able clearly to comprehend what the beastly Scotch _feelosofers_ mean by their "national wealth;" but, as far as I can understand them, this is their meaning: that national wealth means that which is _left_ of the products of the country over and above what is _consumed_, or _used_, by those whose labour causes the products to be. This being the notion, it follows, of course, that the _fewer_ poor devils you can screw the products out of, the _richer_ the nation is.