e many of
you of your existence. We next come to consider what have been the
causes of this weight of taxes. Here we must go back a little in our
history, and you will soon see that this intolerable weight has all
proceeded from the want of a Parliamentary Reform.

In the year 1764, soon after the present king came to the throne, the
annual interest of the Debt amounted to about five millions, and the
whole of the taxes to about nine millions. But, soon after this, a war
was entered on to compel the Americans to submit to be taxed by the
Parliament, without being represented in that Parliament. The
Americans triumphed, and, after the war was over, the annual interest
of the Debt amounted to about nine millions, and the whole of the
taxes to about fifteen millions. This was our situation when the
French people began their Revolution. The French people had so long
been the slaves of a despotic government, that the friends of freedom
in England rejoiced at their emancipation. The cause of Reform, which
had never ceased to have supporters in England for a great many years,
now acquired new life, and the Reformers urged the Parliament to grant
reform, instead of going to war against the people of France. The
Reformers said: 'Give the nation reform, and you need fear no
revolution.' The Parliament, instead of listening to the Reformers,
crushed them, and went to war against the people of France; and the
consequence of these wars is, that the annual interest of the Debt now
amounts to forty-five millions, and the whole of the taxes, during
each of the last several years, to seventy millions. So that these
wars have ADDED thirty-six millions a year to the interest of the
Debt, and fifty-five millions a year to the amount of the whole of
the taxes! This is the price that we have paid for having checked (for
it is only checked) the progress of liberty in France; for having
forced upon that people the family of Bourbon, and for having enabled
another branch of that same family to restore the bloody Inquisition,
which Napoleon had put down.

Since the restoration of the Bourbons and of the old Government of
France has been, as far as possible, the grand result of the contest;
since this has been the end of all our fightings and all our past
sacrifices and present misery and degradation; let us see (for the
inquiry is now very full of interest) what sort of Government that was
which the French people had just destroyed, when our G