Page:The Scourge - Volume 9.djvu/14

regarded merely as incidental and subordinate subjects of complaint. Even during the greater part of Mr. Pitt's administration, the accumulation of taxes was regarded as justified by the exigencies of the moment, and the prudent and circumspect diffusion of his personal resources by the monarch, at once relieved the country from every burthen that the civil list was so extensive as to alleviate, and prevented those clamours, and that discontent, which might have been awakened by the obtrusive display of private gratuities or official extortion. If George the Third was occasionally seduced to pecuniary liberality, inconsistent with his own convenience, he himself was the only sufferer; and in those instances of appeal to the liberality of parliament, and of the country, which most forcibly excited the reluctant attention of the people, they had serious occasion to regret the mortifications of the father, as much as the indiscretion of his offspring.

The true history of our acquiescence under the most enormous burthens, previous to the accession of the Prince Regent, can only be explained by a reference to the personal character of his majesty. War-taxes, and the means of carrying on the war, (if war must be carried on) have seldom excited the clamor of the English people. It is of superfluous, gratuitous, and profligate expence, that they are prone to complain; of expence incurred in defiance of the general opinion of the nation, lavished on unpopular objects, and without any apparent regard to the exigencies of the moment. Whatever might be the injury sustained in consequence of the policy of William Pitt, who will assert that the money was unprofitably employed? One general conviction pervaded the nation, that within the sphere of an exalted individual's influence, the wealth of the public would at least be expended on proper objects, meted with discretion; and when devoted to acts of liberality, would also be devoted to acts of virtue. A noble and merited tribute to integrity, benevolence, and forbearance, before which the self-denial of Scipio fades away; and of which,