I was much delighted with a person who hath a great estate in this kingdom, upon his complaints to me, “how grievously poor England suffers by impositions from Ireland.  That we convey our own wool to France in spite of all the harpies at the custom-house.  That Mr. Shuttleworth, and others on the Cheshire coasts are such fools to sell us their bark at a good price for tanning our own hides into leather; with other enormities of the like weight and kind.”  To which I will venture to add some more:  “That the mayoralty of this city is always executed by an inhabitant, and often by a native, which might as well be done by a deputy, with a moderate salary, whereby poor England lose at least one thousand pounds a year upon the balance.  That the governing of this kingdom costs the lord lieutenant two thousand four hundred pounds a year,[13] so much net loss to poor England.  That the people of Ireland presume to dig for coals in their own grounds, and the farmers in the county of Wicklow send their turf to the very market of Dublin, to the great discouragement of the coal trade at Mostyn and Whitehaven.  That the revenues of the post-office here, so righteously belonging to the English treasury, as arising chiefly from our own commerce with each other, should be remitted to London, clogged with that grievous burthen of exchange, and the pensions paid out of the Irish revenues to English favourites, should lie under the same disadvantage, to the great loss of the grantees.  When a divine is sent over to a bishopric here, with the hopes of five-and-twenty hundred pounds a year; upon his arrival, he finds, alas! a dreadful discount of ten or twelve per cent. A judge or a commissioner of the revenue has the same cause of complaint.”—­Lastly,

“The ballad upon Cotter is vehemently suspected to be Irish manufacture; and yet is allowed to be sung in our open streets, under the very nose of the government."[14] These are a few among the many hardships we put upon that poor kingdom of England; for which I am confident every honest man wishes a remedy:  And I hear there is a project on foot for transporting our best wheaten straw by sea and land carriage to Dunstable; and obliging us by a law to take off yearly so many ton of straw hats for the use of our women, which will be a great encouragement to the manufacture of that industrious town.

I should be glad to learn among the divines, whether a law to bind men without their own consent, be obligatory in foro conscientiae; because I find Scripture, Sanderson and Suarez are wholly silent in the matter.  The oracle of reason, the great law of nature, and general opinion of civilians, wherever they treat of limited governments, are indeed decisive enough.