ir enormous debt.
Indeed, under such extreme straitness and distraction labors the whole
body of their finances, so far does their charge outrun their supply in
every particular, that no man, I believe, who has considered their
affairs with any degree of attention or information, but must hourly
look for some extraordinary convulsion in that whole system: the effect
of which on France, and even on all Europe, it is difficult to
conjecture.

In the third point of view, their credit. Let the reader cast his eye on
a table of the price of French funds, as they stood a few weeks ago,
compared with the state of some of our English stocks, even in their
present low condition:--

French. British.
5 per cents 63 Bank stock, 5-1/2 159
4 per cent (not taxed) 57 4 per cent cons. 100
3 per cent " " 49 3 per cent cons. 88

This state of the funds of France and England is sufficient to convince
even prejudice and obstinacy, that if France and England are not in the
same condition (as the author affirms they are not) the difference is
infinitely to the disadvantage of France. This depreciation of their
funds has not much the air of a nation lightening burdens and
discharging debts.

Such is the true comparative state of the two kingdoms in those capital
points of view. Now as to the nature of the taxes which provide for this
debt, as well as for their ordinary establishments, the author has
thought proper to affirm that "they are comparatively light"; that "she
has mortgaged no such oppressive taxes as ours"; his effrontery on this
head is intolerable. Does the author recollect a single tax in England
to which something parallel in nature, and as heavy in burden, does not
exist in France; does he not know that the lands of the noblesse are
still under the load of the greater part of the old feudal charges, from
which the gentry of England have been relieved for upwards of a hundred
years, and which were in kind, as well as burden, much worse than our
modern land-tax? Besides that all the gentry of France serve in the army
on very slender pay, and to the utter ruin of their fortunes, all those
who are not noble have their lands heavily taxed. Does he not know that
wine, brandy, soap, candles, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, are taxed in
France? Has he not heard that government in France has made a monopoly
of that great article of _salt?_ that