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BY COOPER AND GRAHAM, WILD COURT, LINCOLN'S-INN

FIELDS.

1798.

[Price One Shilling.]
OnH.

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3

AN

ADDRESS

TO THE

People of Great Britain,

&c. &c.

My fellow-countrymen,

THE fentiments which I fhall, in this addrefs, take the liberty of ftating to you on fome interesting points, will, I hope, meet with your candid attention; if not from their worth, from the confideration that they are the fentiments of an independent man. I am neither the friend or enemy of any party in the state; and am fo far an impracticable man, that on all public questions of importance I will follow the dictates of my own individual judgement. No favour which I could receive from this or from any administration, would induce me to support measures which I difliked; nor will any neglect I may expe

rience impel me to oppose measures which I

approve.

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A new fyftem of finance has this year been introduced; and I fairly own it has my approbation as far as it goes. It has given great difcontent to many; but it has given none to me. I lament, as every man muft do, the neceffity of impofing fo heavy a burthen on the community; and, with a family of eight children, I shall feel its preffure as much as moft men: but I am fo far from cenfuring the minifter for having done fo much, that I fincerely wish he had done a great deal more. In the prefent fituation of Great Britain, and of Europe, palliatives are of no ufe, half-measures cannot fave us. Inftead of calling for a tenth of a man's income, I wish the minifter had called for a tenth or for fuch other portion of every man's whole property as would have enabled him not merely to make a temporary provision for the war, but to have paid off, in a few years, the whole or the greatest part of the national debt.

A million a year has been wifely set apart for the reduction of the debt; and had we continued at peace, its operation would have been beneficially felt in a few years: but, in our prefent circumftances, and with an expectation of the recurrency of war at short periods, it is not one, two or three millions a year, that can preferve us from bankruptcy. We had better ftruggle to effect the extinction of the debt in five years than in fifty, though our exertion, during the shorter period, fhould be proportionably greater.

A nation is but a collection of individuals united into one body for mutual benefit; and a national debt is a debt belonging to every individual, in proportion to the property he poffeffes; and every individual may be justly called upon for his quota towards the liquidation of it. No man, relatively speaking, will be either richer or poorer by this payment being generally made, for riches and poverty are relative terms: and when all the members of a community are proportionably reduced, the relation between the individuals, as to the quantum of each man's property,

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