The Present State of Great-Britain (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1804. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PRESENT STATE OF GREAT-BRITAIN. CHAPTER I. Of the system Great-Britain pursues towards other nations..nat1ons like individuals may be said to bid fair for peace and tranquillity, when, with sufficient strength to make rheir independence respected, they employ their industry and their means to provide for their wants and to add to their enjoyments, without injury or injustice towards any other people while nations, who erect political systems in opposition to the INTERESTS and in violation of the RIGHTS of others, must be in a state of violence and war with the rest of the world. Guarding these self-evident truths in mind, we have but to detail the principles upon which the power and wealth of Great-Britain are founded, and by which they are now more than ever sup A ported, to be convinced, that the entire structure depends, not only upon making the interests of every other nation subservient to her own aggrandizement, but that the ptecarious existence of her bloated power and wealth depends upon her being able to impede (c)r to crash the manufactures and commerce of the other nations of Europe; to the end, that the relative superiority she now possesses may not be reduced to an equality, or perhaps to an, inferiority, to those nations whose natural and improvable advantages are equal or superior to her own. Rome has given us an example of the extent to which dominion may be carried by exacting tribute from the nations she' had vanquished; buc it has been reserved for Great-Britain to unite the passion for domination with the insatiable spirit of mercantile exaction; doubly excited, her progress in every quarter of the globe has been prodigious, while the instability of the distant and widelyscattered conquests she has made, and the vast revenue she draws fro.