e as they had assumed. He even
went the length of recording his own inferences of doubt in a set of
resolutions which now stand upon your journals. And perhaps the
retrospect on which the report proceeded did not go far enough back to
allow any sure and satisfactory average for a ground of solid
calculation. But what was the event? When the next committee sat, in
1791, they found, that, on an average of the last four years, their
predecessors had fallen short, in their estimate of the permanent taxes,
by more than three hundred and forty thousand pounds a year. Surely,
then, if I can show, that, in the produce of those same taxes, and more
particularly of such as affect articles of luxurious use and
consumption, the four years of the war have equalled those four years of
peace, flourishing as they were beyond the most sanguine speculations, I
may expect to hear no more of the distress occasioned by the war.

The additional burdens which have been laid on some of those same
articles might reasonably claim some allowance to be made. Every new
advance of the price to the consumer is a new incentive to him to
retrench the quantity of his consumption; and if, upon the whole, he
pays the same, his property, computed by the standard of what he
voluntarily pays, must remain the same. But I am willing to forego that
fair advantage in the inquiry. I am willing that the receipts of the
permanent taxes which existed before January, 1793, should be compared
during the war, and during the period of peace which I have mentioned. I
will go further. Complete accounts of the year 1791 were separately laid
before your House. I am ready to stand by a comparison of the produce of
four years up to the beginning of the year 1792 with that of the war. Of
the year immediately previous to hostilities I have not been able to
obtain any perfect documents; but I have seen enough to satisfy me,
that, although a comparison including that year might be less favorable,
yet it would not essentially injure my argument.

You will always bear in mind, my dear Sir, that I am not considering
whether, if the common enemy of the quiet of Europe had not forced us to
take up arms in our own defence, the spring-tide of our prosperity might
not have flowed higher than the mark at which it now stands. That
consideration is connected with the question of the justice and the
necessity of the war. It is a question which I have long since
discussed. I am now endeavori