impossible that an ample compensation might be made to
the bulk of the present possessors, both for the purchase-money they
have paid and for the actual value of what they now enjoy; and that
the ancient proprietors might be reinstated in the possession of their
former rights, with only such a temporary sacrifice as reasonable men
would willingly make to obtain so essential an object.

The honourable and learned gentleman, however, has supported his
reasoning on this part of the subject by an argument which he
undoubtedly considers as unanswerable--a reference to what would be
his own conduct in similar circumstances; and he tells us that every
landed proprietor in France must support the present order of things
in that country from the same motive that he and every proprietor of
three per cent stock would join in the defence of the constitution of
Great Britain. I must do the learned gentleman the justice to believe
that the habits of his profession must supply him with better and
nobler motives for defending a constitution which he has had so much
occasion to study and examine, than any which he can derive from the
value of his proportion (however large) of three per cents, even
supposing them to continue to increase in price as rapidly as they
have done during the last three years, in which the security and
prosperity of the country has been established by following a system
directly opposed to the counsels of the learned gentleman and his
friends.

The learned gentleman's illustration, however, though it fails with
respect to himself, is happily and aptly applied to the state of
France; and let us see what inference it furnishes with respect to
the probable attachment of moneyed men to the continuance of the
revolutionary system, as well as with respect to the general state
of public credit in that country. I do not, indeed, know that there
exists precisely any fund of three per cents in France, to furnish
a test for the patriotism and public spirit of the lovers of French
liberty. But there is another fund which may equally answer our
purpose--the capital of three per cent stock which formerly existed
in France has undergone a whimsical operation, similar to many
other expedients of finance which we have seen in the course of the
revolution--this was performed by a decree which, as they termed it,
_republicanized_ their debt; that is, in other words, struck off, at
once, two-thirds of the capital, and left the