so many objects, that, had they all continued in their original force, commerce must speedily have expired under them.  Some of them, the ministry which gave them birth was obliged to destroy:  with their own hand they signed the condemnation of their own regulations; confessing in so many words, in the preamble of their act of the 5th Geo. III., that some of these regulations had laid an unnecessary restraint on the trade and correspondence of his Majesty’s American subjects.  This, in that ministry, was a candid confession of a mistake; but every alteration made in those regulations by their successors is to be the effect of envy, and American misrepresentation.  So much for the author’s simplicity in regulation.

I have now gone through all which I think immediately essential in the author’s idea of war, of peace, of the comparative states of England and France, of our actual situation; in his projects of economy, of finance, of commerce, and of constitutional improvement.  There remains nothing now to be considered, except his heavy censures upon the administration which was formed in 1765; which is commonly known by the name of the Marquis of Rockingham’s administration, as the administration which preceded it is by that of Mr. Grenville.  These censures relate chiefly to three heads:—­1.  To the repeal of the American Stamp Act. 2.  To the commercial regulations then made. 3.  To the course of foreign negotiations during that short period.

A person who knew nothing of public affairs but from the writings of this author, would be led to conclude, that, at the time of the change in June, 1765, some well-digested system of administration, founded in national strength, and in the affections of the people, proceeding in all points with the most reverential and tender regard to the laws, and pursuing with equal wisdom and success everything which could tend to the internal prosperity, and to the external honor and dignity of this country, had been all at once subverted, by an irruption of a sort of wild, licentious, unprincipled invaders, who wantonly, and with a barbarous rage, had defaced a thousand fair monuments of the constitutional and political skill of their predecessors.  It is natural indeed that this author should have some dislike to the administration which was formed in 1765.  Its views, in most things, were different from those of his friends; in some, altogether opposite to them.  It is impossible that both of these administrations should be the objects of public esteem.  Their different principles compose some of the strongest political lines which discriminate the parties even now subsisting amongst us.  The ministers of 1764 are not indeed followed by very many in their opposition; yet a large part of the people now in office entertain, or pretend to entertain, sentiments entirely conformable to theirs; whilst some of the former colleagues of the ministry which was formed in 1765, however they may have abandoned the connection, and contradicted by their conduct the principles of their former friends, pretend, on their parts, still to adhere to the same maxims.  All the lesser divisions, which are indeed rather names of personal attachment than of party distinction, fall in with the one or the other of these leading parties.