§ Sir W. Lemonpresented a petition from the owners and occupiers of land in the county of Cornwall. The petitioners adverted to the distresses of the country, and stated their conviction that those distresses did not arise from a transition from a state of war to a state of peace, but chiefly from a lavish expenditure of the government.
Mr. Grenfellbore testimony to the respectability of the individuals who had signed the petition: but he was bound in justice to himself to declare that he did not concur in many of the opinions which the petition contained. Although he felt, in common with every member who heard him, the severity of the distress which pressed upon agriculture, yet he was of opinion, that that distress was not of so general a nature as had been represented. He believed too, that it would be but of temporary duration, and that the period was not far distant when it would be in a considerable degree removed. He knew that many members of that House, and writers out of doors, had painted the present and prospective situation of the country in gloomy and desponding colours. For his own part, he was one of those who never did despond. He never yet had desponded, and he recollected no former occasion on which he was less disposed to entertain gloomy apprehensions of the situation of the country than at present. If those who appeared to despair of the state of the country would admit as proofs of national prosperity an increasing population, accompanied with a considerable extension of trade, both foreign and domestic, together with a degree of active employment throughout the manufacturing districts seldom surpassed, and a more general diffusion, not only, of the necessaries, but of the comforts and even luxuries of life among classes of the community which before were unable to obtain them; and if, in addition to these circumstances, the superabundance of capital manifested by the investments which were made in building, in public works, and in every other 1467 way in which capital could be invested, was also admitted as an indication of national prosperity; then he would confidently say, that all these things existed in every part of Great Britain; and he had no doubt that if the country continued to enjoy the blessings of peace, to be well governed, and to have its affairs properly administered in spite of the blunders of government during the last twenty five years, in spite of the profusion and extravagance which had characterized the government during the same period, in spite of the fatal measure of 1797,which caused our departure from a true standard of currency, and substituted for it a fictitious currency, that from its nature had led to much of that extravagance which he lamented—in spite of all these circumstances be was still of opinion, that in a few years, the nation would make a further advance in wealth and prosperity than it had ever before reached.
§ Ordered to lie on the table.