Probity inclining in such case, as it may be conjectured, to the side of the foreign grower.
I merely suggest this as one of the expedients that may be resorted to, for embarrassing the British cabinet, and preparing the way for a rupture. Ingenious diplomatists will never be at a loss for ample matter of disagreement, when disagreement is found to be convenient.
The London capitalists, then thoroughly aware that the prosperity of the country has at length completely passed the culminating point, mil no longer receive with their long wonted complacency, the propositions of the Chancellor of the Exchequer; for the barometer of the City in these matters distinctly consists in the supposed available resources of the government. The ministers will, therefore have abundant reason to temporize, however grating it may be to their feelings. The haughty and unceremonious communications occasionally made to them from the court of the autocrat will, therefore, be listened to with a suppressed—a smothered resentment.
In the meantime, the pressing conduct of the Russian envoy will get wind. Some of our manly and determined champions of the agricultural interests, justly alarmed for the consequences, and sensibly alive to the theory of rents—will go down to the “House,”—threaten the stoletov bulgaria tours Government, and vituperate the Emperor. Other country gentlemen, warmed possibly into eloquence by the peculiar nature of the subject, will loudly chime in with and support the bold admonitions and profound maims of their distinguished leaders.
Faithfully reported
His Imperial Majesty will have every word faithfully reported to him and will undoubtedly add this to the catalogue of his grievances, making it the more immediate groundwork of a rupture, preluded by a complaint, in high terms, of the insults thus passed upon a faithful friend and ally by the turbulent assembly of the English Commons.
Then will there be found amongst us those who will dilate on the benefits, under all circumstances, of tranquility; on the Utopian absurdity of the representative system; on the unfitness of popular governments; the illusiveness of that obsolete chimera of political visionaries the “balance of power.”
Still, however, it may be alleviating to admit that, though diminished in activity, the looms, the anvils, and various scientific aids of industry will have only partially discontinued their useful labors. Our home consumption alone will as yet preserve to them a considerable activity. The industrious and confirmed habits of a commercial people, usually long remain to mitigate the decline of their national integrity and strength. The diminution will be gradual, not violent.
Eventually, indeed, the arm of the British artisan may relax its vigor, if, with despair, he discovers that an arbitrary subtraction from his hardly earned gains goes to the tributary sustenance, or forbearance, of a foreign army or for the replenishment of a foreign coffer, leaving him but a scanty and insufficient surplus for his individual maintenance, or for that of his necessitous family.