The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

204 TOBIAS SMOLLETT
really confounded, if not convinced.—He would not allow that the
Scots abounded above their proportion in the army and navy of
Great Britain, or that the English had any reason to say his country-
men had met with extraordinary encouragement in the service.—
‘When a South and North-Briton (said he) are competitors for a
place or commission, which is in the disposal of an English minister
or an English general, it would be absurd to suppose that the pre-
ference will not be given to the native of England, who has so many
advantages over his rival.—First and foremost, he has in his
favour that laudable partiality, which, Mr. Addison says, never
fails to cleave to the heart of an Englishman; secondly, he has more
powerful connexions, and a greater share of parliamentary interest,
by which those contests are generally decided; and lastly, he has
a greater command of money to smooth the way to his success. For
my own part, (said he) I know no Scotch officer, who has risen in
the army above the rank of a subaltern, without purchasing every
degree of preferment either with money or recruits; but I know
many gentlemen of that country, who, for want of money and
interest, have grown grey in the rank of lieutenants; whereas very
few instances of this ill-fortune are to be found among the natives
of South-Britain.—Not that I would insinuate that my countrymen
have the least reason to complain.—Preferment in the service, like
success in any other branch of traffic, will naturally favour those
who have the greatest stock of cash and credit, merit and capacity
being supposed equal on all sides.’
But the most hardy of all this original’s positions were these:—
That commerce would, sooner or later, prove the ruin of every
nation, where it flourishes to any extent—that the parliament was
the rotten part of the British constitution—that the liberty of the
press was a national evil—and that the boasted institution of juries,
as managed in England, was productive of shameful perjury and
flagrant injustice. He observed, that traffick was an enemy to all
the liberal passions of the soul, founded on the thirst of lucre, a
sordid disposition to take advantage of the necessities of our fellow-
creatures.—He affirmed, the nature of commerce was such, that
it could not be fixed or perpetuated, but, having flowed to a certain
height, would immediately begin to ebb, and so continue till the
channels should be left almost dry; but there was no instance of the
tide’s rising a second time to any considerable influx in the same
nation. Mean while the sudden affluence occasioned by trade,