skins, and in fact all the numerous productions which the surrounding seas and islands afford for the China market, and return freighted with cargoes of tea, silks, nankeens, etc. all of which commodities are in great demand in the colony, and are at present altogether furnished by East India or American merchants, to the great detriment and dissatisfaction of the colonial.  And, lastly, they would be enabled in a short time, from the great increase of capital which these important privileges would of themselves occasion, as well as attract from other countries to open the fur trade with the north-west coast of America, and dispose of the cargoes procured in China; a trade which has hitherto been** exclusively carried on by the Americans and Russians, although the colonists possess a local superiority for the prosecution of this valuable branch of commerce, which would ensure them at least a successful competition with the subjects of those two nations.

[* Cap. 17.]

[** Many attempts have been made by the legislature to encourage British subjects to carry on this commerce from the ports of the united kingdom, but they have in a great measure failed in this object:  see Convention with the King of Spain, 33 Geo, 3. c. 52.  Indeed, during the period of the Company’s exclusive trade with China, it can only be successfully undertaken by persons residing within the limits of their charter.]

Such are the principal alterations in the policy of this colony which appear most essential to its progress and welfare.  All these indeed, and many other privileges, which, though of only secondary consideration, would tend like a constant concurrence of small rivulets to swell and enlarge the stream of colonial prosperity, would be the natural consequences of a free representative government.  If I have, therefore, gradually ascended from effect to cause, after the manner of experimental philosophy, I have chosen this mode of elucidation, not because it was the only one which offered for the illustration of my subject, but because I consider the inferences to be drawn from it more satisfactory than those to which the opposite mode of reasoning (that of descending from generals to particulars) conducts; because it would be as easy that the abolition of the various grievances which have been enumerated should be coeval with the creation of the free constitution, by which such abolition would be eventually accomplished; and lastly, because the additional tedious delay which would otherwise intervene between the establishment of a colonial legislature, the representation of grievances by which it would be followed, and their consequent removal,—­a process that would occupy two years, might be thus avoided; or in other words, the same period of unnecessary endurance and misery spared to the ill fated inhabitants of this colony.  In recommending, however, that the government of this country should authorize the immediate adoption of