as the matter of a merely luxurious consumption; which is the idea too generally and loosely annexed to our import article.  These above mentioned are materials of industry, not of luxury, which are wrought up here, in many instances, to ten times, and more, of their original value.  Even where they are not subservient to our exports, they still add to our internal wealth, which consists in the stock of useful commodities, as much as in gold and silver.  In looking over the specific articles of our export and import, I have often been astonished to see for how small a part of the supply of our consumption, either luxurious or convenient, we are indebted to nations properly foreign to us.

These considerations are entirely passed over by the author; they have been but too much neglected by most who have speculated on this subject.  But they ought never to be omitted by those who mean to come to anything like the true state of the British trade.  They compensate, and they more than compensate, everything which the author can cut off with any appearance of reason for the over-entry of British goods; and they restore to us that balance of four millions, which the author has thought proper on such a very poor and limited comprehension of the object to reduce to 2,500,000_l._

In general this author is so circumstanced, that to support his theory he is obliged to assume his facts:  and then, if you allow his facts, they will not support his conclusions.  What if all he says of the state of this balance were true? did not the same objections always lie to custom-house entries? do they defalcate more from the entries of 1766 than from those of 1754?  If they prove us ruined, we were always ruined.  Some ravens have always indeed croaked out this kind of song.  They have a malignant delight in presaging mischief, when they are not employed in doing it:  they are miserable and disappointed at every instance of the public prosperity.  They overlook us like the malevolent being of the poet:—­

             Tritonida conspicit arcem
    Ingeniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem;
    Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit.

It is in this spirit that some have looked upon those accidents that cast an occasional damp upon trade.  Their imaginations entail these accidents upon us in perpetuity.  We have had some bad harvests.  This must very disadvantageously affect the balance of trade, and the navigation of a people, so large a part of whose commerce is in grain.  But, in knowing the cause, we are morally certain, that, according to the course of events, it cannot long subsist.  In the three last years, we have exported scarcely any grain; in good years, that export hath been worth twelve hundred thousand pounds and more; in the two last years, far from exporting, we have been obliged to import to the amount perhaps of our former exportation.  So that in this article the balance must be 2,000,000_l._