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larix, the most beautiful, and useful tree, as well as the quickest grower, we know; and therefore very generally propagated. I have a small plantation made. by myself of that tree, which is now exactly nine years old, most of the trees of which, are about twenty feet in height. Trees, therefore, are reared here in great abundance; and thrive as well as perhaps in any climate equally distant from the torrid

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We are not, in Scotland, surprised at finding tree seeds spring up on the tops of houses, or on barren soils; we know well that it is on barren soils alone that ever tree seeds can spring up spontaneously. No plant is so very destructive to seedling trees as grass; and wherever grafs spontaneously grows upon the surface, self sown trees never will spring up. If the soil be so bare as to yield no grafs, and very little heath, trees will get up if the seeds be within reach; especially those with light seeds, like the birch or fir; for there the plants come up; nor are cattle or wild animals tempted to brouse upon them. But if a pile of grafs appears, if that be not cut down, it soon increases, grows thick, covers the young plants in summer, and in winter it falls down and rots, suffocating the young trees. Even plantations made on such soils often fail; for if the trees be large, they frequently die down; and if the plants be smali they are overtopped by the grafs and smothered. An extensive heath is the kind of soil that admits of being easiest stocked with trees by planting. A naked thin soil, that neither carries heath nor grafs, will soon become covered with young plants of birch VOL. ix.

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or fir, if they be fenced in from cattle, if any trees of these sorts be in the neighbourhood to afford the seeds. Edit.

ON THE POLITICAL PROGRESS OF BRITAIN, LETTER VII.

Thomson Callander

Continued from p. 27.

She wished HANOVER in the sea, as the cause of all our misfortunes. Princess Dowager of Wales, Ap. Dodington.

SIR,

To the Editor of the Bee.

THE parliament met again on the 16th November 1742, and earl Stanhope moved for an addrefs to intreat his majesty, "that, in compafsion to his people,

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loaded already with such numerous and heavy taxes, such large and growing debts, and greater "annual expences than the nation at any time before "had ever sustained, he would exonerate his sub

jects of the charge and burden from those mercena"ries, who were taken into the service last year, " without the advice or consent of parliament." The earl of Sandwich, who supported the motion, "took "occasion to speak with great contempt of Ha"NOVER; and in mentioning the royal family, seem*ed to forget that decorum which the subject requi"red. He had indeed reason to talk with asperity on the contract by which the Hanoverians had been taken into the pay of Britain. Levy-money was charged to the account, though they were engaged "for one year only; and though not a single regis “ ment had been raised on this occasion: They had

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been levied for the security of the electorate, and would have been maintained if England had never

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engaged in the affairs of the continent * ”

After re..

flecting on this transaction, the reader will judge whether I was wrong in comparing the annals of the cabinet, with the annals of Tyburn. Lord Sandwich: was followed by the duke of Bedford, who "enlar ged on the same subject: He said, it had been suspected, nor was the suspicion without foundation, "that the measures of the English ministry had long been regulated by the interest of his majesty's "electoral territories; that these had been long con"sidered as a GULPH, into which the treasure of "Britain had been thrown; that the state of Hanover had been changed without any visible cause, "since the accefsion of her princes to the throne of England. Affluence had begun to wanton in her "towns, and gold to glitter in her cottages, without "the discovery of mines, or the increase of her com

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merce; and new dominions had been purchased,s "of which the value was never paid from the revea

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nues of Hanover." Had lord Stanhope, lord Sand--wich, and the duke of Bedford, been persons of infe rior rank, such language would have cost them their lives; for a more disgraceful and contemptuous accusation was never advanced against any sovereign. We are in the habit of railing at tyrants who have filled their palaces with domestic afsafsination. But the author of an unprovoked war is certainly answerable for the lives of those victims who fall in the course of it; and what is the moral distinction between the murders of the bed chamber, and those of the field of battle? Lord Bathurst and Pulteney, by that time earl of Bath, a person distinguished even

* Smollet.

among statesmen for superlative treachery, defended the measures of government by a series of evasions not worth repeating. They were answered by the earl of Chesterfield. His lordship observed "that his majesty had taken into British pay, six"teen thousand Hanoverians, without consulting par"liament; that this step was highly derogatory to "the rights and dignity of the great council of the "nation, and a very dangerous precedent to future "times; that while Britain exhausted herself, al"most to ruin, in pursuance' of engagements to the queen of Hungary, the electorate of Hanover, though under the same engagements, and govern"ed by the same prince, appeared to contribute nothing as an ally to her afsistance; but was paid by “Britain, and at a very exorbitant price, for all the "forces they had sent into the field." His lordship concluded in these words: "It "It may be proper to re"peat what may be forgotten in the multitude of other

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objects, that this nation, after having exalted the "elector of Hanover from a state of obscurity, to the "crown, is condemned to hire the troops of that "electorate to fight their own cause; to hire them "at a rate which was never demanded before, and to "pay levy-money for them; though it is known to "all Europe that they were not raised for this oc“casion*.” In spite of these remonstrances the motion for discharging the mercenaries was rejected'; and we cannot be surprised to hear, that "the new "ministers became more odious than their predecef

* Smollet.

"sòrs, and that people began to consider public The supplies for

❝ virtue as an empty name." 1743, amounted to six millions. Among these were five hundred and thirty-four thousand pounds, for the support of sixteen thousand men in Flanders; two hundred and sixty-five thousand pounds, for the pay

ment of sixteen thousand Hanoverians in the service of Britain, from the 31st of August to the 25th of December 1742; three hundred and ninety-two thousand pounds, for the same troops, from 26th of December 1742 to 25th December 1743; and one hundred and sixty-one thousand pounds, for the payment. of six thousand Hefsians during the same period *

The parliament met again, in December 1743; and the same debates were renewed in both houses, but the torrent of corruption swept all before it. The following grants may serve as a specimen of the prodigality of a degraded and infatuated nation. Six hundred and thirty-four thousand pounds were voted by the commons, for the support of an army of twentyone thousand men, who were to be employed in Flanders; and three hundred and ninety-three thousand pounds, for the payment of sixteen thousand Hanoverians, from the 26th of December 1743, to the 25th of December 1744; two hundred thousand pounds for the king of Sardinia; three hundred thousand pounds for the queen of Hungary; an hundred and twenty thousand pounds to make good the deficiency of grants for the service of the year 1743; and forty

* Scots Magazine for 1742. In stating the supplies for 1742, in my last letter,.I omitted five hundred thousand pounds, voted in confidence to his majesty.

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