However, for argument, I am content to take his state of it. The debt was and is enormous. The war was expensive. The best economy had not perhaps been used. But I must observe, that war and economy are things not easily reconciled; and that the attempt of leaning towards parsimony in such a state may be the worst management, and in the end the worst economy in the world, hazarding the total loss of all the charge incurred, and of everything along with it.

But cui bono all this detail of our debt? Has the author given a single light towards any material reduction of it? Not a glimmering. We shall see in its place what sort of thing he proposes. But before he commences his operations, in order to scare the public imagination, he raises by art magic a thick mist before our eyes, through which glare the most ghastly and horrible phantoms:

Hunc igitur terrorem animi tenebrasque necesse est,
Non radii solis, neque lucida tela diei

Discutiant, sed naturæ species ratioque.

Let us therefore calmly, if we can for the fright into which he has put us, appreciate those dreadful and deformed gorgons and hydras, which inhabit the joyless regions of an imagination fruitful in nothing but the production of monsters.

His whole representation is founded on the sup

cent in 1760, the annuity paid for them since their commencement; the fallacy of which is manifest; for the premiums in these cases can be neither more nor less than the additional capital for which the public stands engaged, and is just the same whether five or five hundred years' annuity has been paid for it. In private life, no man persuades himself that he has borrowed 2001. because he happens to have paid twenty years' interest on a loan of 100%.

posed operation of our debt, upon our manufactures, and our trade. To this cause he attributes a certain supposed dearness of the necessaries of life, which must compel our manufacturers to emigrate to cheaper countries, particularly to France, and with them. the manufacture. Thence consumption declining, and with it revenue. He will not permit the real balance of our trade to be estimated so high as 2,500,0007.; and the interest of the debt to foreigners carries off 1,500,000l. of that balance. France is not in the same condition. Then follow his wailings and lamentings, which he renews over and over, according to his custom-a declining trade, and decreasing specie-on the point of becoming tributary to France —of losing Ireland—of having the colonies toru away from us.

I

The first thing upon which I shall observe is, what he takes for granted as the clearest of all propositions, the emigration of our manufacturers to France. undertake to say that this assertion is totally groundless, and I challenge the author to bring any sort of proof of it. If living is cheaper in France, that is, to be had for less specie, wages are proportionably lower. No manufacturer, let the living be what it will, was ever known to fly for refuge to low wages. Money is the first thing which attracts him. Accordingly our wages attract artificers from all parts of the world. From two shillings to one shilling, is a fall in all men's imaginations, which no calculation upon a dif ference in the price of the necessaries of life can compensate. But it will be hard to prove that a French artificer is better fed, clothed, lodged, and warmed, than one in England; for that is the sense, and the

* Pages 30-32.

only sense, of living cheaper. If, in truth and fact, our artificer fares as well in all these respects as one in the same state in France, how stands the matter in point of opinion and prejudice, the springs by which people in that class of life are chiefly actuated? The idea of our common people concerning French living is dreadful; altogether as dreadful as our author's can possibly be of the state of his own country; a way of thinking that will hardly ever prevail on them to desert to France.*

But, leaving the author's speculations, the fact is, that they have not deserted; and of course the manufacture cannot be departed, or departing, with them. I am not indeed able to get at all the details of our manufactures; though, I think, I have taken full as much pains for that purpose as our author. Some I have by me; and they do not hitherto, thank God, support the author's complaint, unless a vast increase of the quantity of goods manufactured be a proof of losing the manufacture. On a view of the registers in the West Riding of Yorkshire, for three years before the war, and for the three last, it appears, that the quantities of cloths entered were as follows:

In a course of years a few manufacturers have been tempted abroad, not by cheap living, but by immense premiums, tc set up as masters, and to introduce the manufacture. This must happen in every country eminent for the skill of its artificers, and has nothing to do with taxes and the price of provisions.

In this manner this capital branch of manufacture has increased, under the increase of taxes; and this not from a declining, but from a greatly flourishing period of commerce. I may say the same on the best authority of the fabric of thin goods at Halifax; of the bays at Rochdale; and of that infinite variety of admirable manufactures that grow and extend every year among the spirited, inventive, and enterprising traders of Manchester.

A trade sometimes seems to perish when it only assumes a different form. Thus the coarsest woollens were formerly exported in great quantities to Russia. The Russians now supply themselves with these goods. But the export thither of finer cloths has increased in proportion as the other has declined. Possibly some parts of the kingdom may have felt something like a languor in business. Objects like trade and manufacture, which the very attempt to confine would certainly destroy, frequently change their place; and thereby, far from being lost, are often highly improved. Thus some manufactures have decayed in the west and south, which have made new and more vigorous shoots when transplanted into the north. And here it is impossible to pass by, though the author has said nothing upon it, the vast addition to the mass of British trade, which has been

made by the improvement of Scotland. What does he think of the commerce of the city of Glasgow, and of the manufactures of Paisley and all the adjacent country? has this anything like the deadly aspect and facies Hippocratica which the false diagnostic of our state physician has given to our trade in general? Has he not heard of the iron-works of such magnitude even in their cradle which are set up on the Carron, and which at the same time have drawn nothing from Sheffield, Birmingham, or Wolverhampton?

This might perhaps be enough to show the entire falsity of the complaint concerning the decline of our manufactures. But every step we advance, this matter clears up more; and the false terrors of the author are dissipated, and fade away as the light appears. "The trade and manufactures of this country (says he) going to ruin, and a diminution of our revenue from consumption must attend the loss of so many seamen and artificers." Nothing more true than the general observation: nothing more false than its application to our circumstances. Let the revenue on consumption speak for itself:

Average of net excise, since the new du

ties, three years ending 1767 . . £4,590,734 Ditto before the new duties, three years ending 1759

Average increase

3,261,694 £1,329,040

Here is no diminution. Here is, on the contrary, an immense increase. This is owing, I shall be told, to the new duties, which may increase the total bulk, but at the same time may make some diminution of the produce of the old. Were this the fact, it would