text:  Agriculture ruined by the perpetual curse of foreign importation; urban industry alone flourishing by the stimulus of foreign export; vast fortunes accumulated in the hands of a few merchants and great proprietors; constant distress among the labouring poor; all the symptoms of prosperity in the cities--all the marks of decay in the country; luxury the most unbounded side by side with penury the most pinching; an overflow of wealth which cannot find employment in one class of society; a mass of destitution that seeks in vain for work in another; a middle class daily diminishing in number and declining in importance between the two extremes; and government under the influence of popular institutions yielding to all the demands of the opulent class because it gives money: and deaf to all the cries of the impoverished because they can only ask for bread