rrespondents of the Board of Agriculture ascribe the ruin of the
country to taxation. Numerous writers, formerly the friends of the
Pitt system, now declare that taxation has been the cause of our
distress. Indeed, when we compare our present state to the state of
the country previous to the wars against France, we must see that our
present misery is owing to no other cause. The taxes then annually
raised amounted to about fifteen millions: they amounted last year to
seventy millions. The nation was then happy; it is now miserable.

The writers and speakers who labour in the cause of corruption, have
taken great pains to make the labouring classes believe that _they_
are _not taxed_; that the taxes which are paid by the landlords,
farmers, and tradesmen, do not affect you, the journeymen and
labourers; and that the tax-makers have been very lenient towards
you. But, I hope that you see to the bottom of these things now. You
must be sensible that if all your employers were totally ruined in one
day, you would be wholly without employment and without bread; and, of
course, in whatever degree your employers are deprived of their means,
they must withhold means from you. In America the most awkward common
labourer receives five shillings a day, while provisions are cheaper
in that country than in this. Here, a carter, boarded in the house,
receives about seven pounds a year; in America, he receives about
thirty pounds a year. What is it that makes this difference? Why, in
America the whole of the taxes do not amount to more than about ten
shillings a head upon the whole of the population; while in England
they amount to nearly six pounds a head! _There_, a journeyman or
labourer may support his family well, and save from thirty to sixty
pounds a year: _here_, he amongst you is a lucky man, who can provide
his family with food and with decent clothes to cover them, without
any hope of possessing a penny in the days of sickness or of old age.
_There_, the Chief Magistrate receives six thousand pounds a year;
_here_, the civil list surpasses a million of pounds in amount, and as
much is allowed to each of the Princesses in one year, as the chief
magistrate of America receives in two years, though that country is
nearly equal to this in population.

A Mr. Preston, a lawyer of great eminence, and a great praiser of
Pitt, has just published a pamphlet, in which is this remark: 'It
should always be remembered, that the eighteen p