and pressure of the war.
They have much more to dread in that way from the confiscations, the
rapines, the burnings, and the massacres that may follow in the train of
a peace which shall establish the devastating and depopulating
principles and example of the French Regicides in security and triumph
and dominion. In the ordinary course of human affairs, any check to
population among men in ease and opulence is less to be apprehended from
what they may suffer than from what they enjoy. Peace is more likely to
be injurious to them in that respect than war. The excesses of delicacy,
repose, and satiety are as unfavorable as the extremes of hardship,
toil, and want to the increase and multiplication of our kind. Indeed,
the abuse of the bounties of Nature, much more surely than any partial
privation of them, tends to intercept that precious boon of a second
and dearer life in our progeny, which was bestowed in the first great
command to man from the All-Gracious Giver of all,--whose name be
blessed, whether He gives or takes away! His hand, in every page of His
book, has written the lesson of moderation. Our physical well-being, our
moral worth, our social happiness, our political tranquillity, all
depend on that control of all our appetites and passions which the
ancients designed by the cardinal virtue of _temperance_.

The only real question to our present purpose, with regard to the higher
classes, is, How stands the account of their stock, as it consists in
wealth of every description? Have the burdens of the war compelled them
to curtail any part of their former expenditure?--which, I have before
observed, affords the only standard of estimating property as an object
of taxation. Do they enjoy all the same conveniences, the same comforts,
the same elegancies, the same luxuries, in the same or in as many
different modes as they did before the war?

In the last eleven years there have been no less than three solemn
inquiries into the finances of the kingdom, by three different
committees of your House. The first was in the year 1786. On that
occasion, I remember, the report of the committee was examined, and
sifted and bolted to the bran, by a gentleman whose keen and powerful
talents I have ever admired. He thought there was not sufficient
evidence to warrant the pleasing representation which the committee had
made of our national prosperity. He did not believe that our public
revenue could continue to be so productiv