ride, almost emulous of the temples of God, has been reared from the
foundation at a charge of more than fourscore thousand pounds, and yet
remains a naked, rough, unsightly heap.

I am afraid, my dear Sir, that I have tired you with these dull, though
important details. But we are upon a subject which, like some of a
higher nature, refuses ornament, and is contented with conveying
instruction. I know, too, the obstinacy of unbelief in those perverted
minds which have no delight but in contemplating the supposed distress
and predicting the immediate ruin of their country. These birds of evil
presage at all times have grated our ears with their melancholy song;
and, by some strange fatality or other, it has generally happened that
they have poured forth their loudest and deepest lamentations at the
periods of our most abundant prosperity. Very early in my public life I
had occasion to make myself a little acquainted with their natural
history. My first political tract in the collection which a friend has
made of my publications is an answer to a very gloomy picture of the
state of the nation, which was thought to have been drawn by a statesman
of some eminence in his time. That was no more than the common spleen of
disappointed ambition: in the present day I fear that too many are
actuated by a more malignant and dangerous spirit. They hope, by
depressing our minds with a despair of our means and resources, to drive
us, trembling and unresisting, into the toils of our enemies, with whom,
from the beginning of the Revolution in France, they have ever moved in
strict concert and cooeperation. If, with the report of your Finance
Committee in their hands, they can still affect to despond, and can
still succeed, as they do, in spreading the contagion of their pretended
fears among well-disposed, though weak men, there is no way of
counteracting them, but by fixing them down to particulars. Nor must we
forget that they are unwearied agitators, bold assertors, dexterous
sophisters. Proof must be accumulated upon proof, to silence them. With
this view, I shall now direct your attention to some other striking and
unerring indications of our flourishing condition; and they will, in
general, be derived from other sources, but equally authentic: from
other reports and proceedings of both Houses of Parliament, all which
unite with wonderful force of consent in the same general result.
Hitherto we have seen the superfluity of our capit