‘Dull as her lakes that slumber in the storm.’
Two hundred years of commerce and riches, which had gone over her, since, in that noble struggle for thirty years together, she had defied the whole power and the utmost vengeance of Spain, had prepared her for this striking change. But England is not yet quite commercial: the spirit of trade has not spread its poison through the whole mass of our blood and vital juices! As I do not wish that England (with all her high hopes, and called to a far different destiny) may ever share the fate of Holland, I do not wish that she may ever resemble her in herself; that every other feeling should give way to that of interest alone, but that she may tremble at ever realizing the warning picture of the poet,
——‘When, stript of all her charms,
The land of scholars, and the nurse of arms,
Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,
Where kings have toil’d and poets wrote for fame,
One sink of level avarice shall lie,
And scholars, soldiers, kings, unhonour’d die.’
Though a state cannot look to its commerce for its security, it may be involved in endless difficulty and danger by the views of commercial aggrandizement. The views of men wholly engrossed in such pursuits are altogether low and mechanical. If they see far, it is always in a straight line before them; their sagacity is confined to what immediately concerns their own interest. They are so intent upon that one object that they overlook every thing else; and their eagerness to accumulate is such, that they would rather hazard all than relinquish a pursuit which promises them some new acquisition. While they are successful, it is impossible to persuade them that they ever can be otherwise, or to restrain their rashness by any considerations of prudence or humanity. Actuated only by gross, palpable objects, and full of themselves, they laugh at all distant danger. All general reasonings on the principles of human nature, or the operation of causes by which they do not find themselves influenced, appear to them perfectly futile and visionary. ‘They think there is nothing real but that which they can handle; which they can measure with a two-foot rule, which they can tell upon ten fingers.’ As they believe money to be the only substantial good, they are also persuaded that it is the only instrument of power. With this they think themselves invulnerable, and that the more of it they have, the more secure they are. As long as their credit remains unimpaired, and their remittances are regularly made, they consider the fate of battles and the intrigues of cabinets as of very little comparative importance. They look up with more awe and admiration to a stock-jobbing broker surrounded with his clerks than they do to a victorious general at the head of his army. The rise and fall of stocks, and the demand for our manufactures abroad, are in their opinion the only criterions of national prosperity. On the other hand, whatever affects their own interest, the loss of an island, or the stopping up of a port, is found immediately to threaten the ruin of the country. Their fears are as rash and groundless as their confidence. Every thing in which they themselves are concerned is viewed through a magnifying medium, and demands all our vigilance and attention, while every thing else dwindles into insignificance. I therefore think there ought to be as little connection as possible between the measures of government and the maxims of the Exchange, and that the interests of a great empire ought not to be managed by a company of factors.
I have thus expressed the sentiments which occurred to me on the present situation of our affairs, and some of the steps which led to it. I have done this as freely and unreservedly as I could, because if they are wrong, it is not likely that they will be much attended to; but if they are right, they may be of some use. And I conceive that even they who may think the view I have taken of the measures of the last administration, and the application of particular observations to our own conduct altogether unfounded, will not deny the truth of the general principles on which they are built. Or that the sentiments of justice, of honour, of reason and liberty, by which I think our views and conduct ought to have been regulated, can be too deeply impressed on our minds.