ut breaking faith with the creditors of the state, or
burthening the industry of the country.

On the increase of the poor and the means of diminishing their
numbers enough has been said. That must originate with government
in every case and in some cases exclusively belongs to it. They must
act of themselves entirely, with respect to the very poor and to their
children. With those who are not quite reduced to poverty, they should
grant aid, to enable them to struggle against adversity, and prevent
their offspring from becoming burthensome to the public.

The other affairs well attended to, capital and industry will lose their
tendency to leave the country; and, if they should continue to leave it,
the case will be desperate; for, after the lands are improved, and the
best encouragement given to the employment of capital, and to the
greatest extent nothing more can be done. It will find employment
elsewhere.

The efficacy of a remedy, like every thing else in this world, has a
boundary, but the extent and compass of that depends, in a great
degree, on exertion and skill, and particularly so in the present
instance. It remains with the government to make that exertion, either
directly itself, or by putting individuals in the way to make it.

The government of a country must then interfere, in an active manner,
in the prevention of the interior causes of decline. As to the exterior
ones, they do not depend on a country itself; but, so far as they do, it is
exclusively on the government, and in no degree on the individual
inhabitants.

The envy and enmity which superior wealth create, can only be
diminished by the moderation and justice with which a nation
conducts itself towards others; and if they are sufficiently envious and
[end of page #283] unfair to persist, a nation like Britain has nothing
to fear. But we must separate from envy and enmity occasioned by the
possession of wealth, that envy and enmity that are excited by the
unjust manner in which wealth is acquired.

In respect to Britain, it has been shewn, that the envy and enmity
excited, are chiefly by her possessions in the East Indies; we have
seen, also, that the wealth obtained by those possessions is but very
inconsiderable, and that they have, at least, brought on one-third of
our national debt; it would then be well, magnanimously to state the
question, and examine whether we ought not to abandon the
possession of such unprofitable, such expensive