There is, Sir, another office which was not long since closely connected with this of the American Secretary, but has been lately separated from it for the very same purpose for which it had been conjoined:  I mean the sole purpose of all the separations and all the conjunctions that have been lately made,—­a job.  I speak, Sir, of the Board of Trade and Plantations.  This board is a sort of temperate bed of influence, a sort of gently ripening hothouse, where eight members of Parliament receive salaries of a thousand a year for a certain given time, in order to mature, at a proper season, a claim to two thousand, granted for doing less, and on the credit of having toiled so long in that inferior, laborious department.

I have known that board, off and on, for a great number of years.  Both of its pretended objects have been much the objects of my study, if I have a right to call any pursuits of mine by so respectable a name.  I can assure the House, (and I hope they will not think that I risk my little credit lightly,) that, without meaning to convey the least reflection upon any one of its members, past or present, it is a board which, if not mischievous, is of no use at all.

You will be convinced, Sir, that I am not mistaken, if you reflect how generally it is true, that commerce, the principal object of that office, flourishes most when it is left to itself.  Interest, the great guide of commerce, is not a blind one.  It is very well able to find its own way; and its necessities are its best laws.  But if it were possible, in the nature of things, that the young should direct the old, and the inexperienced instruct the knowing,—­if a board in the state was the best tutor for the counting-house,—­if the desk ought to read lectures to the anvil, and the pen to usurp the place of the shuttle,—­yet in any matter of regulation we know that board must act with as little authority as skill.  The prerogative of the crown is utterly inadequate to the object; because all regulations are, in their nature, restrictive of some liberty.  In the reign, indeed, of Charles the First, the Council, or Committees of Council, were never a moment unoccupied with affairs of trade.  But even where they had no ill intention, (which was sometimes the case,) trade and manufacture suffered infinitely from their injudicious tampering.  But since that period, whenever regulation is wanting, (for I do not deny that sometimes it may be wanting,) Parliament constantly sits; and Parliament alone is competent to such regulation.  We want no instruction from boards of trade, or from any other board; and God forbid we should give the least attention to their reports!  Parliamentary inquiry is the only mode of obtaining Parliamentary information.  There is more real knowledge to be obtained by attending the detail of business in the committees above stairs than ever did come, or ever will come, from any board in this kingdom, or from all of them together.