In contrasting the ability of the two nations to support a commercial conflict, it was said, "Great Britain, tottering under the weight of a king, a court, a nobility, a priesthood, armies, navies, debts, and all the complicated machinery of oppression which serves to increase the number of unproductive, and lessen the number of productive hands; at this moment engaged in a foreign war; taxation already carried to the ultimatum of financial device; the ability of the people already displayed in the payment of taxes, constituting a political phenomenon; all prove the debility of the system, and the decreptitude of old age. On the other hand, the United States, in the flower of youth; increasing in hands; increasing in wealth; and, although an imitative policy had unfortunately prevailed in the erection of a funded debt, in the establishment of an army, the anticipation of a navy,[14] and all the paper machinery for increasing the number of unproductive, and lessening the number of productive hands; yet the operation of natural causes has, as yet, in some degree, countervailed their influence, and still furnish a great superiority in comparison with Great Britain." An attempt was made to liken the present situation of America to that in which she stood at the commencement of her revolutionary war; and the arguments drawn from the inconvenience to which a privation of British manufactures would expose the people at large were answered by observing--"This was not the language of America at the time of the non-importation association; this was not her language at the time of the declaration of independence. Whence then this change of American sentiment? Has America less ability than she then had? Is she less prepared for a national trial than she then was? This can not be pretended. There is, it is true, one great change in her political situation. America has now a funded debt: she had no funded debt at those glorious epochs. May not this change of sentiment, therefore, be looked for in her change of situation in this respect? May it not be looked for in the imitative sympathetic organization of our funds with the British funds? May it not be looked for in the indiscriminate participation of citizens and foreigners in the emoluments of the funds? May it not be looked for in the wishes of some to assimilate the government of the United States to that of Great Britain? or at least, in wishes for a more intimate connexion? [Footnote 14: Resolutions had been offered for the creation of a small navy to be employed in the Mediterranean.]