the public believe he had entirely confecrated to liberty, added to the flaws which they thought they could perceive in hisown character, took greatly from the weight of any thing he could fay to prejudice that of any other perfous.

But however negatively the want of employment, which most of the working people now be gan to complain of, might at firft feem to be owing to the want of a real concern for their fub fiftence, in thofe who had taken upon them to be the champions of their liberty, it foon appeared to be pofitively owing to the miniftry, allowing the miniftry to be chargeable with the ill confequences of every meature they propofe, however fanctified by the approbation of the privy council and parliament, and enforced by the latter; a way of judging, which, by the by, is attended with no fmall degree of injury to our honour, and even danger to our well-being, fince it not only tends to make foreigners believe, that we confider ourfelves as the

property of a few individuals, but to render us actually fo, by exempting thofe, whofe bufinefs it is to examine into the propofals of minifters, from the infamy of not doing their duty properly in that respect.

But to abide by the common mode of fpeech on these occafions, a mode which minifters, however, cannot jully complain of, fince they have fo long acquiefced in it, this great decline of the means of fubfiftence, as we have been juft faying, foon appeared to be their own work. At the fame time that they thought it expedient to fit out armed cutters,

under the command of fea-offcers, to prevent fmuggling on the coafts of Great Britain aud Ireland, they obliged all fea-officers ftationed on thofe of our American colonies, to act in the capacity of the meaneft revenue-officers; making them fubmit to the ufual custom houfe oaths, and cuftom-house regulations for that purpofe; by means of which the na ture of their own important and exalted character was debated, and that irregular vivacity of theirs, and contempt of common forms, which had been fo lately, and with fuch advantage, exerted against the common enemy, was now inconfiderately played off upon the fubject.

If thefe gentlemen did not understand all thofe cafes, in which thips were liable to pe nalty, they as little underfood thole, in which fhips were exempt even from detention; and, of courfe, hurt the interefts of trade in the fame proportion that they difappointed the expectations of the treatury; fo that, through the natural violence of their difpofition, and their unacquaintance with the revenue bufinels, (and, how could it be expected they fhould all at once become acquainted with a bufinefs, which requires, at leaft, as much ftudy as that they had been bred to?) the trade fill carried on between British fubjects, in fpite of that vast number and intricacy of bonds, clearances, 'cockets, affidavits, ftamps, certificates, registers, manifefts, &c. with which the heart has been fo unfkilfully opprefled to benefit the members, was very much injured.

What ferved greatly to aggra

vate this evil, was its being, in a great measure, without prevention or redrefs; or at leaft that fpeedy prevention and redrefs, which fo great an evil required. Those who did the mifchief, lived on an element, where civil juttice is well known to have but little influence: or, if they fometimes ventured on fhore, it was in bodies too numerous not to intimidate the civil officers; or in places, where their blunders, to call them by no worfe a name, were not cognizable, or where, at least, they ran no risk of being met by thofe, whofe bufinefs it was to profecute them. The lords of the admiralty, or of the treasury, in Europe, could alone remove the evil; fo that, confidering the time an application to thefe boards must have taken in reaching them, and the orders of thefe boards in reaching the tranf greffors, it may fairly be accounted one of the greateft bleflings Great Britain has had for a long time paft to boast of, that the trade of her colonies, as far as it depended upon thefe new-fangled cuftom-houfe officers, was not in the mean time totally annihilated.

Bad as this evil was, there fprung one till worse from the fame fource. A trade had been for a long time carried on between the British and Spanish colonies in the new world, to the great advantage of both, but efpecially the former, and likewife of the mother country; the chief materials of it being, on the fide of the British colonies, British manufactures, or fuch of their own produce, as enabled them to purchase British manufactures for their own confumption; and, on the part of the Spaniards, gold and filver in

bullion and in coin, cochineal and medicinal drugs; befides live stock, and mules, which in the West India plantations, to which places alone. thefe laft articles were carried, from their great usefulness juftly deferved to be ranked in the fame predicament with the most precious metals.

This trade did not clash with the fpirit of any act of parliament made for the regulation of the British plantation trade, or, at leaft, with that fpirit of trade, which now univerfally prevails in our trade acts; but it was found to vary from the letter of the former, enough to give the new revenue officers a plea for doing that from principles of duty, which there were not wanting the moft powerful motives of intereft to make them do. Accordingly, they feized, indifcriminately, all the fhips upon that trade, both of fubjects and foreigners, which the customhoufe officers ftationed a thore; through fear of the inhabitants, a jufter way of thinking, or an happy ignorance, had always per mitted to pafs unnoticed. Probably, thofe at the head of affairs did not fufpect that there was any fuch variance between the letter of our old laws and the prefent fpirit of trade.

And, how weak foever this excufe may appear, it is the best than can be made for occafion being given to an evil, to which it was not in the power of any board to apply an adequate remedy; fince all naval officers, though not fworn and particularly directed to act, profefedly, as tide furveyors and tide waiters, may notwithstanding do both occafionally, in virtue of their rules [6] 2

of

of war; and it is hardly probable, that, having once tafted the sweets of making rich prizes, they fhould all, and all at once, thun thofe op portunities, which before it had been their bufinefs to feek; and facrifice their intereft to the barren honour of complying with the orders of 'fuperiors, however enlightened, and actuated by a regard to the welfare of their country. Nay, how could thefe fuperiors venture to iffue fuch orders, confidering what jealoufy the reprefentatives of the people have ever thewn to fecure to the law its full course; and how feverely they have fometimes animadverted upon the highest characters, that happened to avow a defign of difpenfing with it?

It might even be doubted, if the fupreme authority of the nation could apply fuch a remedy, con fidering the offence, which the making a law for that purpofe might give the court of Spain, in confequence of fome treaties made with her at a time when we did not understand the principies of commerce fo well; or did not apprehend fuch advantages from trading with the Spaniards in the new world; and, confequently, neglected to make thefe treaties fufficiently explicit; not but that they had been fince often and often implicitly renewed in more enlightened periods. But, perhaps, it was this very confideration, that prevented any attempts being made to amend them.

Befides this trade carried on between the British American colonies in general, efpecially thofe in the West Indies, and the Spanish, there had for a long time fubfifted one equally extentive, between the

British North American colonies in particular, and the French Weft India ones, to the great advantage of both, as it confifted chiefly in fuch goods, as muft otherwife have remained a drug, if not an incumbrance, upon the hands of the poffeffors; fo that it united, in the ftri&teft fenfe, all those benefits, which liberal minds include in the idea of a well-regulated commerce, as tending, in the higheft degree, to the niutual welfare of thofe who carry it on.

In thefe benefits the refpe&tive mother countries had, no doubt, a very large hare, though it may be impotlible to determine, which, upon the whole, had moft. We had enough to engage thofe in power to wink at, for it was not frictly according to law, in confideration of the vast quantity of manufactures it enabled our North American colonies to take from us; and this, too, in spite of all the clamours, which thofe concerned in our West India trade and poffeffions could raise against it, as enabling the French to underfell them, in Weft-India produce, at foreign markets. Probably, this clamour was found to arife in a great measure from another confideration, which it was not fo proper in thefe gentlemen openly to avow, that of their not getting as good a price, as otherwile they might expect, for fuch part of their produce, as they fold in the mar kets of the mother country; and which, confidering the vaft demand for it, even by the poor, to whom from long habit it is become one of the chief neceffaries of life, it would have favoured of oppreflion to permit the raifing any higher. Be that as it will, this trade was permitted

to

to be carried on for a long time into the laft war between Great Britain and France; directly, by means of flags of truce; and in a roundabout way, through the Dutch and Danith iflands; and at length, through the Spanish port of Monte Chrifti in the island of Hifpaniola: till, at laft, the vaft advantages the French received from it above what the English could expect, in confequence of our having in a manner laid fiege to all their Weft India iflands, determined the government to put a ftop to it.

In doing this, however, they did not think proper to confider it fo much in the light of a contraband trade, as in that of a treafonable practice, fupplying the enemy with neceffaries, without which it would have been impoflible for these valuable iflands to hold out fo long against our attempts to reduce them. Accordingly, as foon as the conclufion of the laft war had taken the fting of treafon from this trade, it returned again to its priftine flourishing condition, and remained fo, till it funk under the fame blow with the trade between us and the Spaniards, whofe hiftory, we have already related.

This trade. not only prevented our North American colonies from

being drained of their current cath by the calls of the mother country upon them, but added greatly to it, fo as to make it in fome meafure to keep pace with their domeftic trade, which could not but increafe greatly from day to day, in proportion to the remarkable increase of mankind in that part of the world, where the cheapnefs of land determines the greater part of the inhabitants to the exercife of the rural arts, fo favourable to population.

It is, therefore, no way furprifing, if the inhabitants of thefe colonies, immediately on a stop being put to this trade, came to a refolution not to buy any cloathing they could poffibly do without, that was not of their own manufacturing. They were already too much in debt to the mother country to expect the ufual fupplies from her without making the ufual returns; and, not having the ufual returns to make, they wifely began the plan of retrenchment, which neceffity dictated, by renouncing finery, to the no fmall difappointment of many wife politicians, who had, rather prematurely, concluded, that because the wool of the colonies was not as good as that of the mother country, it would be impoffible for them not to depend upon her.

T

HOUGH, therefore, that fuppreflion of trade, of which we have been fpeaking in the laft chapter, inftead of barely intercepting the fupply of the neceffaries and conveniencies of life, which our North American colonies before ufed to receive in return for their fuperfluitics and incumbrances, tended vifibly, by obftructing their internal commerce, to deprive them in a great meafure even of thofe bleflings, the fources of which lay within themselves; yet was a law made in the begin5th Apr. ning of the laft year, which, whilft it rendered 1764. legal, in fome refpects, their intercourfe with the other European colonies in the new world, loaded the best part of it with duties fo far above its ftrength to bear, as to render it contraband to all intents and purpofes. Befides, it ordered the money arifing from thefe duties to be paid, and in fpecie too, into the British exchequer, to the entire draining off of the little ready money which might happen to be ftill remaining in thefe colonies. As though, however, the beft way to cure an emaciated body, whofe Juices happened to be tainted, was

to leave it no juices at all, within a fortnight after another law was paffed to hinder thefe wretched colonies from fupplying the demand of money for their internal wants, by preventing fuch paper bills of credit, as might afterwards be iffued in them from being made legal tender in payment; and the legal tender of fuch paper bills, as were actually fubfifting, from being prolonged beyond the periods already limited for calling in and finking the fame.

It is true, indeed, that all the money arifing from the above duties was to be referved for defraying the charges of protecting the colonies on which it was levied; and that, at the fame time with the law for reftraining the increafe of paper money, feveral new laws were made to encourage and in. creafe, as well as regulate the commercial intercourfe of our North American colonies with the mother country; fuch as a bill for granting leave, for a limited time, for carrying rice from the provinces of South Carolina and Georgia to other parts of America on paying Britith duties; a bill for granting a bounty upon the importation of hemp, and rough

and