wealth, the creature of commerce, which solely constitutes our envied power and rank in the present world.

To elucidate by facts a system so essential to our being, your Petitioners have appeared at this tremendous crisis, when Great Britain and America, the parent and the child, with equal irritation, are menacing at least, what barely in words, what barely in thought, is horrour—to unsheath the sword of parricide, and sever the dearest ties of consanguinity, of mutual aids, and general prosperity.

Your Petitioners preferred but one supplication to the all-merciful Being; their own reason suggested no other than to be heard by you. He hath inclined you to hear, truth enables us to speak. Truth in its nature is healing, and productive of reflection; reflection leads to composure of mind, and strengthens in our breasts a hope that an hour may come, when this humble application may not be found altogether ineffectual; if too, for that auspicious purpose, it may prove my good fortune so to collect and combine the various evidence from your bar, and from the copied records of office upon your table, as to establish a system of the whole, and found that whole upon truth; whose efficacy upon the mind I have described before, and with, some fervour of hope anticipate now.

Here, sir, I entreat your acceptance of a clue through the seeming labyrinth of accounts. The ways, indeed, are all unadorned, but the least perplexed of any to a little attention: and to make them short shall be mine.

You have before you official Accounts of the Exports from England to the West Indies, from Christmas, 1739, to Christmas, 1773. Of these thirty-four years, the first seventeen, ending at Christmas, 1756, forms a period which closes in the first year of the last war; the whole value exceeds £12,000,000, and gives an annual medium of more than £700,000. The last period of seventeen years end at Christmas, 1773, and renders a total of more than £19,000,000, and more than £1,100,000 at the annual medium I only observe in this place, that the increase of the latter upon the former is in the proportion of eleven to seven; and of the value in both, two-thirds are British Goods, and one-third only Foreign.

A second set of Accounts contain the Exports to North America. The first seventeen years yield more than £17,000,000 in the whole, and than £1,000,000 at the annual medium. The last period renders more than £40,000,000 in the whole, and largely more than £2,300,000, at the annual medium, an increase upon the former in a proportion of twenty-three to ten, with a value in both of three-fourths British Goods to one-fourth Foreign.

The third Account relates to Africa, whose commerce with England owes its existence to her Colonies. The first seventeen years reach nearly to £3,000,000, and to an annual medium something short of £180,000; the last seventeen years nearly to £8,000,000, and an annual medium of £470,000, an increase upon the first in a proportion of forty-seven to eighteen, with a value in each of two-thirds British Goods to one-third Foreign.

On this augmentation of Exports to your Colonies, irrefragable proof is founded, that through whatever channels riches have flowed among them, that influx hath made a passage from them to the mother country, and in the most wholesome mode, not like the dash of an oriental torrent, but in salubrious, various, placid, and copious streams, refreshing and augmenting sober industry by additional employment to thousands and ten thousands of families, and lightening the burthen upon rents, by reducing the contributions of Parishes to poverty unemployed.

But this requires a further explanation. The date of the last period is the commencement of the last war. The expenditure of publick money was one source of wealth to the West Indies. That temporary acquisition being soon exhausted, by its return to England, sufficient sums were procured upon credit after the peace, to cultivate new land and improve the old, still further enlarging the consumption of our commodities there and in Africa, that from the year of the peace to Christmas, 1773, the import of Sugar only to England, who, without her West Indies, must purchase that immense article from foreigners, hath risen from one hundred and thirty thousand to one hundred and seventy thousand hogsheads, an augmentation in value of £800,000.

The publick expenditure being much larger in North America, produced a proportionate effect on the consumption of our Manufactures through that Continent. This money returned from its peregrination to the mother country, by 1764, or 1765 at the furthest. But, as the West Indies had a succedaneum, so had North America through a new opening of trade, which converted the misfortune of England into a blessing. Though I am convinced that the same number of hands at least is devoted to Agriculture here, and that the earth at a medium of years hath yielded the same increase. As we have been disposed to consume it all among ourselves, or as our presumption may impute the scarcity to Providence restraining the fertility of our soil for ten years past, in either case we could not spare, as heretofore, our grain to the foreigner; a reduction in our exports one year with another, of more than £600,000. The American subject took place of the British in markets we could no longer supply, extended their vent from season to season, and from Port to Port, and by a circuition of fresh money thus acquired by themselves, added fresh numbers to your manufactures, the rents of land increasing at the same time, till the amount of Exports to North America, for the last three years, ending at Christmas, 1773, stand upon your papers at £ 10,500,000, or £3,500,000 at the annual medium; add £1,300,000, the medium of the same three years, for the West Indies, and £700,000 for Africa, and the total value of Exports to the Colonies, nearly in a proportion of three-fourths British to one fourth Foreign Goods, is £5,500,000, at the medium of these three years, ending at Christmas, 1773. A slight matter this to the great question before you, says the general voice without doors, and readily admitted without the ceremony of proof. This I mention by way of preparation to introduce the most material, account of all, which will demonstrate, that the magnitude of £5,500,000, exported in the Colony branches, the West Indian, North American, and African, is not to be considered as an object so striking in itself, as in comparison with the whole export of England to all countries whatsoever. The annual medium for twelve years back stands on these papers at less than £15,000,000; but as I have limited the Colony branch to 1771, '2, and '3, I shall take the general Exports during that period, which renders a medium of £16,000,000. What part is the Colony branch? Five and a half is rather more than a third. Does the magnitude appear in a stronger light by the comparison? Or hath it been admitted in this view, before it was stated? Be it so. I have something behind, perhaps enough for the keenest appetite of admission to digest.

Sir, one part of our Exports to foreigners is supplied by Colony Produce, Tobacco, Rice, Sugar, &c., through Great Britain, for £ 1,000,000 sterling, at a low estimation. Add £2,000,000 more, exported of all kinds from England to her principal Colony, Ireland, and both to the former £5,500,000; your whole Colony branch will then exceed the half of your whole Export in the proportion of eight and a half to sixteen.

Thanks to the care and forecast of our forefathers one hundred and twenty years since. In the circle of ancient trade, narrow in comparison with the modern, the great trading states, Carthage, preeminent to all, suffered but little from rivalship. All in Europe are our rivals, all devoted to manufacture and traffick, as capital pursuits of policy; while we, struggling with such competition, have in some instances already experienced its hurtful effects, and must prepare for more; we had always one consolation left, that our Colony trade, kept to ourselves by old and salutary regulations, hath been augmented from period to period, till at present it constitutes more than half of the whole, with a prospect of further growth, rather than diminution, unless we create our own rivals.

One more observation remains, of all the most important, so far as safety to a state is a consideration above all others. Of this trade, the part which depends on the associated Provinces, contributes in Naval Stores, in other low priced and bulky commodities, more to the British Marine, than triple the present exports in commodities of such higher value, and if shipped so largely in foreign bottoms to the foreign market. Such was your situation.

Upon the present question I will not take that larger half before mentioned for my ground. I will deduct the £2,000,000 to Ireland, and the odd £500,000 furnished to Prov-