“. . . The ruin in this part of the country is general. An unruined farmer is an exception. The Pitt system seems destined to fulfil all my prophecies—even those that were thought the most wild. Faith! your antagonist Mr. Canning has his hands full. He has already discovered what it is to negociate with a debt of 800 millions and a dead weight of 100 millions hanging round the neck of the country. This was one of the points that Windham told me I was mad upon. I said—you can have neither war nor peace in safety without getting rid of this infernal debt. He used to say—‘let us beat the French first.’ I used to say that to beat them with bank notes was to beat ourselves in the end. And thus it has been. The country becomes a poor, low, pitiful, feeble, cowardly thing, unless we get rid of the debt; and that is not to be got rid of without a reform in the House of Commons. The conduct of the Lords has always been to me the most surprising thing. Terrified out of their wits at Hunt,* who is really as inoffensive as Pistol or Bardolph, and hugging to their bosoms the Barings, the Ricardos and all that tribe. . . . However, it is useless to exclaim. . . . The war used to be called an ‘eventful period;’ but this is the eventful period for England.”
