Page:Thoughts on the causes and consequences of the present high price of provisions.djvu/31

[ 23 ] cise method of cure would be to take superabundant wealth from individuals, and with it discharge the debts of the public; but here justice, liberty, and law, would obstruct our progress with insurmountable difficulties. Whoever therefore would attempt this salutary, but arduous undertaking, must not begin by extirpating engrossers and regraters, nor by destroying rats and sparrows, those great forestallers of the public markets; but by gradually paying off that debt, not only by œconomy, but by the most avaritious parsimony, and as far as possible, by narrowing those channels, through which riches have flowed in such torrents into the pockets of private men: He must be deaf to all mercantile application for opening new inlets of commerce at the public expence: he must boldly resist all propositions for settling new colonies upon parliamentary estimates; and most carefully avoid entering into new wars: in short, he must obstinately refuse to add one hundred