Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 9.djvu/358

348 imports be true, we have been gainers, upon the balance, by our trade with France for several years past; and, although our gain amounts to no great sum, we ought to be satisfied, since we are no losers, with the only consolation we are capable of receiving.

Lastly, The worst consequence is behind. If we raise the duty on wine to a considerable height, we lose the only hold we have of keeping among us the few gentlemen of any tolerable estates. I am confident, there is hardly a gentleman of eight hundred pounds a year and upward, in this kingdom, who would balance half an hour to consider whether he should live here, or in England, if a family could be as cheaply maintained in the one as the other. As to eatables, they are as cheap in many fine counties of England, as in some very indifferent ones here; or, if there be any difference, that vein of thrift, and prudence in economy, which passes there without reproach, (and chiefly in London itself) would amply make up the difference. But the article of French wine is hardly tolerable, in any degree of plenty, to a middling fortune: and this it is, which by growing habitual, wholly turns the scale with those few landed men, disengaged from employments, who content themselves to live hospitably, with plenty of good wine in their own country, rather than in penury and obscurity in another, with bad, or with none at all.

Having therefore, as far as in me lies, abolished this additional duty upon wine; for I am not under the least concern about paying the interest of the national debt, but leave it, as in loyalty bound, wholly to the wisdom of the honourable house of commons; I come now to consider, by what thods,