Note 2 — On the grievous, but necessary part of the Impost.

I have mentioned the fatal tree, as a consequence of the miseries attending war. This is more sensibly felt in England than any where else, for reasons obvious to every one. During the first years that immediately follow a peace, a four-fold number of wretches, to what are executed at other times, are brought to the gallows. It is with much ado that a man returns within the sphere of the confined and daily occupations of the handicrafts or husbandmen, when he has for some years rioted in that licentiousness permitted, in a manner, to soldiers and sailors, in every thing that does not concern their respective service.