xistence, express any resentment, when one of us either dies a natural
death, or is slain, whose lives are necessarily of a short duration,
when at one view I beheld the carcases of so many great cities?' What if
he had seen the natives of those free republics, reduced to all the
miserable consequences of a conquered people, living without the common
defences against hunger and cold, rather appearing like spectres than
men? I am apt to think, that seeing his fellow creatures in ruin like
this, it would have put him past all patience for philosophic
reflection.

"As for my own part, I confess, that the sights and occurrences which I
had in this my last journey, so far transported me to a mixture of rage
and compassion, that I am not able to decide, which had the greater
influence upon my spirits; for this new cant, of a rich and flourishing
nation, was still uppermost in my thoughts; every mile I travelled,
giving me such ample demonstrations to the contrary. For this reason, I
have been at the pains to render a most exact and faithful account of
all the visible signs of riches, which I met with in sixty miles' riding
through the most public roads, and the best part of the kingdom. First,
as to trade, I met nine cars loaden with old musty, shrivelled hides;
one car-load of butter; four jockeys driving eight horses, all out of
case; one cow and calf driven by a man and his wife; six tattered
families flitting to be shipped off to the West Indies; a colony of a
hundred and fifty beggars, all repairing to people our metropolis, and
by encreasing the number of hands, to encrease its wealth, upon the old
maxim, that people are the riches of a nation, and therefore ten
thousand mouths, with hardly ten pair of hands, or hardly any work to
employ them, will infallibly make us a rich and flourishing people.
Secondly, Travellers enough, but seven in ten wanting shirts and
cravats; nine in ten going bare foot, and carrying their brogues and
stockings in their hands; one woman in twenty having a pillion, the rest
riding bare backed: Above two hundred horsemen, with four pair of boots
amongst them all; seventeen saddles of leather (the rest being made of
straw) and most of their garrons only shod before. I went into one of
the principal farmer's houses, out of curiosity, and his whole furniture
consisted of two blocks for stools, a bench on each side the fire-place
made of turf, six trenchers, one bowl, a pot, six horn spoons, three