of England, but a
drain upon its specie. The balance against England by this trade is
regularly upwards of half a million annually sent out in the East-India
ships in silver; and this is the reason, together with German intrigue,
and German subsidies, that there is so little silver in England.

But any war is harvest to such governments, however ruinous it may be
to a nation. It serves to keep up deceitful expectations which prevent
people from looking into the defects and abuses of government. It is the
lo here! and the lo there! that amuses and cheats the multitude.

Never did so great an opportunity offer itself to England, and to all
Europe, as is produced by the two Revolutions of America and France. By
the former, freedom has a national champion in the western world; and by
the latter, in Europe. When another nation shall join France, despotism
and bad government will scarcely dare to appear. To use a trite
expression, the iron is becoming hot all over Europe. The insulted
German and the enslaved Spaniard, the Russ and the Pole, are beginning
to think. The present age will hereafter merit to be called the Age of
Reason, and the present generation will appear to the future as the Adam
of a new world.

When all the governments of Europe shall be established on the
representative system, nations will become acquainted, and the
animosities and prejudices fomented by the intrigue and artifice of
courts, will cease. The oppressed soldier will become a freeman; and
the tortured sailor, no longer dragged through the streets like a felon,
will pursue his mercantile voyage in safety. It would be better that
nations should wi continue the pay of their soldiers during their lives,
and give them their discharge and restore them to freedom and their
friends, and cease recruiting, than retain such multitudes at the
same expense, in a condition useless to society and to themselves. As
soldiers have hitherto been treated in most countries, they might be
said to be without a friend. Shunned by the citizen on an apprehension
of their being enemies to liberty, and too often insulted by those
who commanded them, their condition was a double oppression. But where
genuine principles of liberty pervade a people, every thing is restored
to order; and the soldier civilly treated, returns the civility.

In contemplating revolutions, it is easy to perceive that they may arise
from two distinct causes; the one, to avoid or get rid of some