tims would be found among the feeble, the aged, the widow, and the orphan; among those who are the least able to struggle against the waves of adversity, and who on the loss of their property would be destitute of every resource. Tens, or even hundreds of thousands, of hapless Englishmen, would in one day, be reduced from ease and affluence, to extreme and remediless distress. Elegance would be exchanged for rags, luxury for hunger and cold, comfort and security for misery and despair.

I know not even whether the benign institution of our poor laws, and our many charitable foundations for the relief of the aged and destitute, would not aggravate the general distress. Most of the latter, would be entirely deprived of the funds provided for their support; and the multitudes of poor to be sustained by parochial rates, would become a burthen scarcely supportable by the impoverished contributors, reduced as they would greatly be in number as well as in fortune. Persons in the upper and middle ranks of society, would be consequently the less able to assist each other in the dreadful event supposed. The hand of friendship or benevolence, would be arrested by the grasp of the tax-gatherer.

Most persons have friends in whose affectionate sympathy they think a resource would be found, under the greatest malice of for tune; but in this tremendous case, whole circles of the dearest connections, or most familiar acquaintances, would all find themselves under the sad necessity of soliciting, instead of being able to impart, relief. Their fortunes being all sunk in the same enormous vortex, they would be in no more capacity to assist each other, than passengers in the same ship, when she goes to pieces on the rocks, or hungry mariners on the same desolate island. Or could a wretched family invoke the aid of some acquaintance or friend, who had still some landed income, or other means of support, they would find him pre-occupied by nearer claims; or so surrounded with supplicants, the objects of equal sympathy, as to have but a mere useless pittance to afford. The best hope of the miserable many, therefore, would be to partake of such parochial relief, as a ruined country might still be able to give to the common mass of its paupers.

How terrible would it be for an accomplished and virtuous female, who till now had been accustomed to all the comforts, and elegant enjoyments of an easy fortune, to become, with her lovely children, an inmate of a parish workhouse! Yet those receptacles of coarse and unsightly indigence, from which even the more decent of our poor now turn with disgust, would then become an asylum, to which the most refined and delicate might be driven to resort. They

might wish perhaps, that the humanity of their country had provided no such sad alternative to famine; but the imperious requisitions of hunger, or a conscience revolting at suicide, would compel the starving individual, much more the wretched family, to protract a painful existence even on those loathsome terms.

The prospect of such calamities is enough to make an Englishman view with anxiety and alarm, those appearances of general opulence, in which we are too apt to exult.

When we walk in the neighbourhood of this grand metropolis, through any of those pleasant villages with which it is surrounded, we see the wealth and prosperity of the nation, in their most pleasing and captivating dress. The road is bordered on each side, and the green or common surrounded with country retreats of all dimensions, from the stately villa, down to the little painted box, which mocks the tax-gatherer with its single window: and through the whole range of the scale, all is neatness and comfort. Almost every mansion, however small, is provided with its parterre in front, and its garden behind; unless fortunate enough to possess a more extensive allotment of land, in the centre of which, surrounded with ornamental shrubs and flower-plots, it exhibits a still more inviting shew of retirement and independence.

Yet these are the abodes of men engaged in the busy occupations of commerce; and a great many of them too, in subordinate stations; men, who in any other country, and forty years ago in our own, would have been shut up in the smoky town, under the same roof with their counting houses or shops.

If we pass in the morning, the masters of these happy retreats are seen issuing with cheerfulness, refreshed by the pu:e breezes of the country, to repair on horseback or in carriages, to their daily business in London. In the afternoon, we see them returning in the same easy and commodious way, to enjoy their family comforts; or already sat down to the social meal, which waited their arrival. In the interior of these rural mansions, all is answerable to their outward appearance. The smallest of them can boast, if not elegance, at least neatness, cleanness, and convenience in its furniture, and plenty, if not luxury, on its table, greater than are always seen in other countries even in the mansions of the great.

This wide extent of domestic enjoyments, exhibits more clearly as well as more pleasingly, the general affluence of the country, than even the profusion of private carriages, and the many splendid equipages, which crowd the roads to a great distance from the metropolis.

Often in the contemplation of such scenes, have I shuddered at the thought of that sad reverse which may be near at hand. How possible is it that in a few years, aye, in a few months, all this unexampled comfort and happiness, may vanish, like the painted clouds in a western sky, before an evening tempest!

These enjoyments of the merchants, and other busy actors in the various industry of London, may be compared to the tulips and hyacinths which we sometimes see blowing in flower-glasses in their parlour windows. The numberless fibres from which they derive their nutriment, are not inserted in the solid earth of real property, but float in the loose element of public credit; and the wreck of the funds would be as fatal to them, as the fall of the glass cylinder to the flower.

Our merchants would have again to return to the parsimonious habits, and rigid industry of their fore-fathers. Instead of being able to unite as now, the profits of the town, with the health and pleasures of the country, at the charge of two residences, and the expensive means of communication between them, singularly fortunate would be that individual, who could find, by immuring himself and his family in the heart of the metropolis, and by using every resource that painful industry and parsimony could there explore, the means of escaping want.

Those numberless costly villas, therefore, which now arrest the eye in every direction, those interminable ranges of less conspicuous, but not less happy dwellings, which form the suburbian villages, would soon be deserted; and would fall to the ground almost as rapidly as they arose from it. In a few years, a walk six miles from London, instead of exciting, as now, lively emotions of patriotic joy and admiration, would be like an evening visit to a church yard; presenting nothing but the shadows of impotent ambition, and the mouldering records of departed happiness. The wretched survivor of the freedom of his country, would be happy to escape from that wide circle that now comprises the most interesting displays of our commercial affluence, to leave Hampstead, or Woodford, Clapham, or Norwood, behind him, in order to find a country less incumbered with ruins, and deliver himself awhile from the torments of visual recollection.

Sect. 6. Dreadful extent and effects of the contributions that would

be exacted.

IN this sad foresight of the desolation of my country, I have passed over unnoticed some of the earlier and more terrible effects of conquest.

On the probable carnage in the field, it would be uncandid to lay any stress. England I trust would not be lost without a struggle worthy of such a stake; and though the astonishing celerity of our enemy's operations, might defraud a large proportion of our military defenders of the chance of dying for their country, yet there probably would be some actions fertile enough in slaughter. But it would be unfair to reckon this among the aggravations of our fate; for scenes would soon ensue, which would make the living envy the dead their peace, as well as their glory. Let us rather look therefore, to some of the manifold and endless oppressions which would await the hapless survivors.

I have generally and faintly sketched some parts of the wretchedness of losing property; but a worse mischief will be the false repute of possessing it.

Here again we are in danger of misapplying, by false analogies, the lessons of experience. In other countries which have been conquered by France, their impoverished and exhausted state has been generally known to the victors. They have been either the seats of war, and drained by previous contributions; or like Holland, conquered under circumstances which made it prudent to practise forbearance, till time had gradually revealed the real indigence of the people. In other cases too, a native government has been made the instrument of exactions; and its representations, the sincerity of which there has been little room to doubt, have sometimes induced the conquerors to moderate their extreme requisitions. At worst, such a government has been permitted to regulate, equalize, and soften, the actual collection. The fate of these countries has nevertheless been severe enough; and much more so than they have dared to reveal, through any public channels of complaint.

But if England be conquered, it will be under circumstances which will leave France nothing to fear from the odium which she may contract by the utmost rapacity of conduct; and to a native British government, we shall unquestionably not be intrusted.

What is a still more fearful distinction, our enemies have the most extravagant ideas of our public and individual wealth. Far from understanding the great financial difficulties under which we actually labour, they suppose us to have gold enough yet in reserve to subsidise the whole continent for ages; and that instead of being impoverished, we have been greatly enriched by the war.

I ask then, what eloquence, or what attainable proofs, would serve to convince these rapacious masters, that the largest contribution, or the greatest number of heavy contributions, which they

might successively impose upon us, were too much for our purses to yield? Sums would soon be required, which the subordinate administrators of finance for the country at large, would find it impos sible to raise. Our tyrants would then perhaps apportion the charge, upon counties, cities, towns, and even parishes. But the inefficacy of this, and every other resort, would infallibly sooner or later bring the levy home to our houses, by the mode of individual assessments; and a system of inquisitorial exaction and oppression would ensue, more cruel than ever before existed upon earth.

Let the owner of an elegant villa, or sumptuous town mansion, consider how he would be able to satisfy a military commissary of his poverty, when called upon for a thousand guineas; or let the master of a handsome house either in town or country, reflect how he could prove his inability to pay a hundred? Each indeed might truly allege, that he had not one guinea in his possession or power, that his wealth had been annihilated by the public bankruptcy, and that his daily subsistence now depended upon the credit which he still found, for a while, with his tradesmen, or upon the compassionate assistance of friends. But all this would be regarded as common and stale pretence, which every man might set up, which could never be clearly investigated, and which must therefore be generally disallowed. The unhappy man perhaps might truly add, that his plate had already been seized, his cabinets rifled, and his most valuable moveables sold, to satisfy former requisitions. But this would be considered only as evidence of former contumacy, and systematic deception. The splendid or genteel manner, in which he would be known recently to have lived, would be deemed a presumption against him paramount to every proof that could be offered of present poverty or distress.

In truth, nothing would be more natural than the surmise, that poverty was a pretence to elude the demands of the state. With many, their pleas of inability, if not wholly groundless, would at least be exaggerated statements; and the detection of falsehood in some cases, would seem to justify incredulity in all. Besides, after every allowance made for the long use of our paper representatives for money, it would be very difficult for a foreigner to believe that so small a quantity of specie remained in the country, as would be actually found. Some few persons too might be detected in having buried or concealed it; which when discovered, would perhaps be almost as fatal to their countrymen, as the expedient of some unhappy Jews (who on the capture of Jerusalem by Titus swallowed their gold) was to their wretched fellow sufferers.