ཟླ to have been made with the French Crown, and not with the French company; and it is a circumftance, which may add greatly to the ftability of them, fince it is but natural to think, that fuch treaties will not be fo liable to infringement from want of refpect on the part of the nabobs, or from a spirit of infolence and avarice on that of the French company's fervants. It would be very mortifying, if, merely by thefe precautions, that company fhould foon be able to underfell us, in India goods, at foreign markets, notwithstanding all their late loffes, and their being obliged to raise money by annuities at 9 per cent. upon all lives indifcriminately, at a time that ours has reduced the intereft of their bonds from 4 to 3 per cent. and the acceffion of their revenues in India is faid to amount to fo immenfe a fum*. The affairs of the Dutch in the Eaft Indies appear to be much more ably, though not fo fplendidly, conducted. The beginning of this year they declared a dividend of 17 1-half per cent. which was fo extraordinary as to make their flock rife 50, though we did not hear of any fuccefs their arms had lately had in that part of the world. In about feven months after this rife, they, indeed, received the news of their governor in Ceylon having driven the king from his fortrefs and palace of Candy; but this advan tage, had it even coincided in point of time with the above rife, is too infignificant to account for it. Befides, the Dutch, when they conquer there, conquer for themfelves, and not for the nabobs, of the country, fo as to preclude all thofe inconveniencies, which muft attend an empire in an empire, or rather an empire against itself. And, indeed, cooped up as the Dutch are in Europe, and confined in Africa and America, it is requifite, that they fhould look out in Afia for fuch an extenfion of territory, as may alone fupply them with the immediate means of fubfiftence, and the materials of trade, in a degree fomewhat proportionable to that of their population; and not leave them expofed to the difagreeable alternative of wanting bread, or forcing other nations to give it to them as carriers and agents in their commercial intercourfe; motives by no means common to the English, who, in proportion to their numbers, are richer in land, that inexhauftible fource of materials, than any other people, the Spaniards only excepted. Some gentlemen, who have refided for a long time in the EattIndies, have, however, proposed, that we fhould take a pattern after the Dutch there, and conquer for ourselves; as the vast revenues of a country fo fruitful and extensive, and fo full of ingenious, induftrious, and frugal people, could not fail greatly to forward the payment of our national debts; alledging withal, that the court of Delli, to an abfolute independence upon which it might not be safe to pretend, has often offered us the na◄ This acceffion was, about three years ago, publicly affirmed to be fo confiderable as to make the company's revenues amount to 700,000l. per annum. If fo, what ought it to be at prefent? bobship bobfhip of the country. To this nion, and the vaft revenues antiexed to it; for, furely, good government is a blefling of as much value, if not more than any other: and as to any great advantage which the Indians may be thought to have, by the princes of the country spending their revenues on the fpot; it is to be confidered, that this could be more than compenfated to them by fuch an extraordinary degree of fecurity, as might render unneceffary the fo common precaution among them of burying their treasures, often never to rife again, to the almoft total abforption of those daily pouring into Europe from the mines of America. CHA P. V. Downfal of the miniftry expected. They keep their ground notwithstanding; are fupported by antiminifterial doctrines. Naval officers fworn, and direcled to act as revenue officers, on the American coafts. Greatly interrupt the trade between the British colonies in that part of the world, and that between those colonies and the Spanish and French. Onfidering the little ftrength fhewn by the miniftry, in any queftion that related merely, to themselves during the courfe of that feflion of parliament, whofe principal tranfactions, as they were then thought to be, we furveyed in our laft volume, it was almoft univerfally apprehended, that the biow, which they ftruck immediately after its rifing, against such of their opponents as lay moft within their reach, muft fpeedily render that little ftrength of theirs fill lefs, and fooner or later end in their total diffolution. But in this, people happened to be greatly mistaken. Inftead of fickening, they rather feem to thrive upon it. Their difgrace, it now appears, was to come from another quarter, though produced in a great meafure by feeds of their own fowing. However fenfible that part of the body politic, against which they had thus thought proper to fignalize their refentment, might be in itfelf, the fympathy between it and the other parts was not ftrong enough to excite thofe emotions and clamours, which though not legiflative in the fmalleft degree, have been often found to carry with them fuch natural powers of the executive kind, as to more than influence thofe great bodies conftitutionally invefted with both. A A doctrine long propagated by the enemies of minifters, now ferved to uphold the caufe of a miniftry. Through the writings of thofe in oppofition to courtmeasures, the bulk of the people had been fo long accuftomed to confider a standing army, as, in fome measure, unconftitutional, or, at leaft, dangerous to their free dom from domeftic tyranny, that they forgot all the fo late and fo ftrenuous exertions of that body in their defence from foreign violence. And, as much as the effablishment of a national militia might tend to blunt that fting, it equally tended to make it appear a dead excref cence upon, and, of course, a burthen to, the nation. The people, therefore, were no way forry to fee it thus rudely treated, not confidering, that the quarter, from whence fuch treatment came, might render that body as, dangerous in a legiflative, as it was ever apprehended to be in a military capacity. But thefe truths were not fufficiently enforced. The writer beft qualified for that talk, by a lucky knack of feafoning his compofitions to the palate of the unthinking vulgar, both great and fmall, was fled, Befides, the people, fufficiently fecure, as they imagined, in the enjoyment of their liberty by the late fevere animadverfions of both judges and -juries against the executioners of general warrants on innocent perfons, and not metaphysical enough to enter into the arguments concerning the illegality of thefe war rants merely as general, began to confider, that, whilft this nice point, fo much above their comprehenfion, was in debate, no effectual measures had been thought of by their pretended friends to fecure them from the want of bread, though the law, they knew, forbid them from going to feek it in foreign parts. They even called to mind an event of the preceding year t, in which numbers of their order had been fuffered to be illegally, as they thought, confined, and feveral of thofe fo confined to be killed, without any of the lately fo zealous writers and actors againit minifters of fate and their general warrants, firring either pen or tongue to procure them liberty, while living; or enquiring into their blood, when they had loft their lives in endeavouring to recover it. Perfonal fatire might have been of great fervice on this occafion to divert the multitude, fuch is the pleafing nature of fcandal, from two clofe an attention even to their own feelings: but the late parliamentary refolutions against feditious libels; the judicial animadverfions upon them nearly on the fame fpot, on which the execution of thefe parliamentary refolutions had been oppofed; and the doubts concerning what might be thought feditious, and what not, kept all the party writers quiet, upon that fubject, except one, whofe too openly efpoufing the caufe of Mr W, now difgraced, by facrificing to libertinifm on the altar, which he would have had For a more particular account of this melancholy affair, fee our Chronicle for 1763. VOL. VIII. [C] the the public believe he had entirely confecrated to liberty, added to the flaws which they thought they could perceive in his own character, took greatly from the weight of any thing he could fay to prejudice that of any other perfons. But however negatively the want of employment, which moft of the working people now began to complain of, might at firft feem to be owing to the want of a real concern for their fubfiftence, 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 measure they propofe, however fanétified 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 refpect. But to abide by the common mode of fpeech on thefe occafions, a mode which minifters, however, cannot justly 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-offi cers, to prevent fmuggling on the coafts of Great Britain and Ireland, they obliged all fea-officers ftationed on thofe of our American colonies, to act in the capacity of the meanest revenue-officers; making them fubmit to the ufual cuftom houfe oaths, and cuftom-houfe regulations for that purpofe; by means of which the nature 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 penalty, they as little underflood thofe, 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 treafury; fo that, through the natural violence of their difpofition, and their unacquaintance with the revenue bufinets, (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 ftill carried on between British fubjects, in fpite of that vaft number and intricacy of bonds, clearances, cockets, affidavits, ftamps, certificates, regifters, manifefts, &c. with which the heart has been fo unfkilfully oppreffed to benefit the members, was very much injured. What ferved greatly to aggra yate vete this evil, was its being, in a great measure, without prevention or redrefs; or at leaft that Ipeedy prevention and redrefs, which fo great an evil required. Those who did the mifchief, lived on an element, where civil juftice 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 worse a name, were not cog nizable, or where, at leaft, they ran no risk of being met by those, 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 these boards muft have taken in reaching them, and the orders of these boards in reaching the transgreffors, it may fairly be account ed one of the greatest bleflings Great Britain has had for a long time past to boast of, that the trade of her colonies, as far as it depended upon these new-fangled custom-houfe officers, was not in the mean time totally annihilated. Bad as this evil was, there fprung one still worfe 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 most powerful motives of intereft to make them do. Accordingly, they feized, indifcriminately, all the hips upon that trade, both of fubjects and foreigners, which the customhoufe officers ftationed a fhore; through fear of the inhabitants, a jufter way of thinking, or an happy ignorance, had always per. mitted to país unnoticed. bably, 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. Pro |