r, and which will make the evidence more conclusive, if it shall
afford the same inference: I allude to the Post-Horse duty, which shows
the personal intercourse within the kingdom, as the Post-Office shows
the intercourse by letters both within and without. The first of these
standards, then, exhibits an increase, according to my former schemes of
comparison, from an eleventh to a twentieth part of the whole duty.[50]
The Post-Office gives still less consolation to those who are miserable
in proportion as the country feels no misery. From the commencement of
the war to the month of April, 1796, the gross produce had increased by
nearly one sixth of the whole sum which the state now derives from that
fund. I find that the year ending 5th of April, 1793, gave 627,592_l._,
and the year ending at the same quarter in 1796, 750,637_l._, after a
fair deduction having been made for the alteration (which, you know, on
grounds of policy I never approved) in your privilege of franking. I
have seen no formal document subsequent to that period, but I have been
credibly informed there is very good ground to believe that the revenue
of the Post-Office[51] still continues to be regularly and largely upon
the rise.

What is the true inference to be drawn from the annual number of
bankruptcies has been the occasion of much dispute. On one side it has
been confidently urged as a sure symptom of a decaying trade: on the
other side it has been insisted that it is a circumstance attendant upon
a thriving trade; for that the greater is the whole quantity of trade,
the greater of course must be the positive number of failures, while the
aggregate success is still in the same proportion. In truth, the
increase of the number may arise from either of those causes. But all
must agree in one conclusion,--that, if the number diminishes, and at
the same time every other sort of evidence tends to show an augmentation
of trade, there can be no better indication. We have already had very
ample means of gathering that the year 1796 was a very favorable year of
trade, and in that year the number of bankruptcies was at least one
fifth below the usual average. I take this from the declaration of the
Lord Chancellor in the House of Lords.[52] He professed to speak from
the records of Chancery; and he added another very striking fact,--that
on the property actually paid into his court (a very small part, indeed,
of the whole property of the kingdom) there had