Page:Thoughts on the causes and consequences of the present high price of provisions.djvu/33

[ 25 ] tion consequent from their disappointment; and to stem a little those torrents of absurdities, with which one is overwhelmed in all companies, both male and female. Every politician at a coffee-house has a nostrum for this disease, which he pronounces infallible; and abuses administration for not immediately adopting it. Projectors every day hold forth schemes unintelligible and impracticable; for not executing which, government is arraigned; the ignorant support them, the factious make use of them, and oppositions, knowing what it is to be hungry, pathetically bewail the miseries of the poor. The dowager at the quadrille-table inveighs loudly against the cruelty of parliament, for disregarding the voice of the people, and suffering provisions to continue at so exorbitant a price; calls a king; and if she happens to be beasted, grows more outrageous against the ministry; while the silent old general, her unfortunate partner, In three sen-