-- Not that I would
insinuate that my countrymen have the least reason to complain.
Preferment in the service, like success in any other branch of
traffic, will naturally favour those who have the greatest stock
of cash and credit, merit and capacity being supposed equal on
all sides.'
But the most hardy of all this original's positions were these:
That commerce would, sooner or later, prove the ruin of every
nation, where it flourishes to any extent -- that the parliament
was the rotten part of the British constitution -- that the liberty
of the press was a national evil -- and that the boasted
institution of juries, as managed in England, was productive of
shameful perjury and flagrant injustice. He observed, that
traffick was an enemy to all the liberal passions of the soul,
founded on the thirst of lucre, a sordid disposition to take
advantage of the necessities of our fellow creatures. -- He
affirmed, the nature of commerce was such, that it could not be
fixed or perpetuated, but, having flowed to a certain height,
would immediately begin to ebb, and so continue till the
channels should be left almost dry; but there was no instance of
the tide's rising a second time to any considerable influx in the
same nation.
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