Note 2 — LETTER XXII.

This is exceedingly true; the ‘Morning Post’ ought to have congratulated you further on the fact that the things produced by this greater cost are now usually good for nothing: Hear on this head, what Mr. Emerson said of us, even so far back as 1856 (and we have made much inferior articles since then). “England is aghast at the disclosure of her fraud in the adulteration of food, of drugs, and of almost every fabric in her mills and shops; finding that milk will not nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper bite the tongue, nor glue stick. In true England all is false and forged.… It is rare to find a merchant who knows why a crisis occurs in trade,—why prices rise or fall, or who knows the mischief of paper money.2 In the culmination of National Prosperity, in the annexation of countries; building of ships, depôts, towns; in the influx of tons of gold and silver; amid the chuckle of chancellors and financiers, it was found that bread rose to famine prices, that the yeoman was forced to sell his cow and pig, his tools, and his acre of land; and the dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was touching the point of ruin.”3