Page:An answer to a pamphlet, intitled, "Thoughts on the causes and consequences of the present high price of provisions" in a letter, addressed to the supposed author of that pamphlet.djvu/24

( 22 ) you recommend are reducible to this general one) "are practicable, or consistent with the honour, dignity, or even advantage of this country in other respects, I cannot determine; but this I will venture to affirm, that by no others this calamity, so loudly and so justly at this time complained of, can ever be redressed." Strange, Sir, that you cannot determine, whether it be consistent with the advantage of a country to save itself from ruin by the only means by which it can be saved! Why, truly, Sir, if you are so very backward in coming to a determination, I would never wish you to determine any cause of mine; because, before you could determine, I might be undone. The right of self-preservation, I imagined, had been unalienable in every individual, much more in every community, because it can never be supposed, that all the members of a community can give their consent to their own destruction: and if those, who