‘On the Probable Consequences of Continuing the Present System of Ambition and Hostility - From the First Lecture on the Nature and Calamities of War’

This chapter provides a discussion 'on the probable consequences of continuing the present system of ambition and hostility' from the Lecture on the Nature and Calamities of War. The theme of this lecture is the war and the debt Britain was amassing in the course of prosecuting it. One of John Thelwall’s suggestions is that it was the ‘profligate expenditure of the public money in foreign exploits and crusades’ by the ancien regime that led to the French Revolution. The lecture concludes that the system of war has plunged Britain country into innumerable calamities and that the permanent happiness of the country, can only be secured by a full, fair, and equal representation of the people in the Commons House of Parliament.