The National Register.
London, England, 1819-06-13 00:00:00

times," fondly connecting peace with plenty, and
plenty with moderated demands and reduced expen-
diture; and then, after a tantalization of four or five
years duration, to see the cup of miskay again filled
to the very brim, every prospect of alleviation again
removed, and removed oo s digitises which admits of

no definition, makes the heart sick indeed. This is
not the language of idle declamation, we are not
vainly censuring a system which cannot be avoided,
Nrc assert, and we do so boldly, Mat a single shilling
of taration ougli not lobe asked on one hand, and ought
not to be granted on Me other. In the manhood of
England's fortunes, financial arrangements would
not have been wanting to meet the exigency of the
times, and that too without the creation of fresh
burthens.

But the evil does not end here. If the fit:zing
system is to be pursued, artificial means of support.
ing it must of necessity be resorted to, and minis-
ters, we shall begin to suspect, are playing but a
deep game of the most unprincipled hypocrisy when
they pretend to be converts to the opinions and
warnings of those who have so long and powerfully
sounded in their ears the claims of the country to a
sound metallic currency, and the removal of that
horrible anomaly which has for so many years placed
both our private property, and the national interests
and honour, in. the hands of a trading company.
They are greater ideots than we believe them to be,
if they do not know that the only possible location
about the Ilinti'Restriction is the difficulty appre-
hended with respect to the MCVCIIUC, if the value
of money should be materially raised, and it should
become, as formerly, an adequate and substantial
representative of the property of the country ; and
their conduct, on the other hand, assumes a charac.
ter which we will not venture to describe, if, know-
ing and feeling how perfectly absurd it is to look
fur the return of rash payments, and to go on with
increased taxation, as simultaneous measures of po-
licy, they have held the language attributed to
them by reporters, and played with the sense and
votes of Parliament

Again, if taxation is to be pushed on, pauperism,
discontents, and riots must follow in its train
with aggravated features. Shallow politicians may
assert that taxes, if properly imposed, do not affect
the poor, but firsts are better than a thousand specu-
lations even of the wisest beads, and the history of
taxation will chew us that pauperism and taxation
have regularly and exactly kept pace together. Be
tore the Revolutionary War, our taxes were not
quite one third of their present amount, and our poor
rates were then two millions. In 1803, when the
taxes had mounted to two thirds, the poor rates had
advanced to /IT trillions; and in 1816, when the
taxes had been pushed to 70,000,0001. the poor
rates had risen to nearly nine. We have thus a
clear and unquestionable testimony of the effects of
taxation on public misery, and with public misery
upon public morals. Then come the quackeries of
legislation, and, what is still worse, Spies and Sus.
pensitm Acts, and the whole host of evils before
which every tautly irtAte flees away, and under
whose operatioa liberty expires. But we shall
pursue this melancholy subject no further. The
House of Coalitions is our only hope, anti to this,
often at. it dis.i..iroints w, we would still cling. We
would remind that august assembly that a bleeding
country cries to them for protection, and that the
destiliies of futeve ages are balanced in their hands.