Page:Armatafragment00ersk.djvu/162

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

( 152 )

plain of the want of a circulating medium as an accidental and temporary cause of your difficulties, capable of being removed by politic contrivances. We have a vulgar saying in England, that you can have no more of a cat than his skin; and if out of twenty shillings, not less than ten are consumed by government and by collateral burthens, ten only can remain in real and substantial circulation; the scarcity of money may be lamented, and ingenious devices may be held out as remedies, but without a radical system of improvement, rendering property more productive, and trade more prosperous, what danger can be greater than opportunities of borrowing, when there are no means of repaying what is borrowed?—If land, from having sunk below its former rental, is mortgaged to more than half its value, would it be any thing like an advantage to the proprietor to find out even a fair lender, who would advance him money on the remaining part? since, without some means of improvement, his estate in the end must infallibly be sold.

"The