And here I must remark, with what alacrity you
are accustomed to fly to the succour of your distressed allies, leaving
the distressed of your own country to the care of Providence or--the
parish. When the Portuguese suffered under the retreat of the French,
every arm was stretched out, every hand was opened, from the rich man's
largess to the widow's mite, all was bestowed, to enable them to rebuild
their villages and replenish their granaries. And at this moment, when
thousands of misguided but most unfortunate fellow-countrymen are
struggling with the extremes of hardships and hunger, as your charity
began abroad it should end at home. A much less sum, a tithe of the
bounty bestowed on Portugal, even if those men (which I cannot admit
without inquiry) could not have been restored to their employments,
would have rendered unnecessary the tender mercies of the bayonet and
the gibbet. But doubtless our friends have too many foreign claims to
admit a prospect of domestic relief; though never did such objects
demand it. I have traversed the seat of war in the Peninsula, I have
been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never under
the most despotic of infidel governments did I behold such squalid
wretchedness as I have seen since my return in the very heart of a
Christian country. And what are your remedies? After months of inaction,
and months of action worse than inactivity, at length comes forth the
grand specific, the never-failing nostrum of all state physicians, from
the days of Draco to the present time.
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