light. But before I have
done, I shall just remark that the history of this office is too recent
to suffer us to forget that it was made for the mere convenience of the
arrangements of political intrigue, and not for the service of the
state,--that it was made in order to give a color to an exorbitant
increase of the civil list, and in the same act to bring a new accession
to the loaded compost-heap of corrupt influence.

There is, Sir, another office which was not long since closely connected
with this of the American Secretary, but has been lately separated from
it for the very same purpose for which it had been conjoined: I mean the
sole purpose of all the separations and all the conjunctions that have
been lately made,--a job. I speak, Sir, of the _Board of Trade and
Plantations_. This board is a sort of temperate bed of influence, a sort
of gently ripening hothouse, where eight members of Parliament receive
salaries of a thousand a year for a certain given time, in order to
mature, at a proper season, a claim to two thousand, granted for doing
less, and on the credit of having toiled so long in that inferior,
laborious department.

I have known that board, off and on, for a great number of years. Both
of its pretended objects have been much the objects of my study, if I
have a right to call any pursuits of mine by so respectable a name. I
can assure the House, (and I hope they will not think that I risk my
little credit lightly,) that, without meaning to convey the least
reflection upon any one of its members, past or present, it is a board
which, if not mischievous, is of no use at all.

You will be convinced, Sir, that I am not mistaken, if you reflect how
generally it is true, that commerce, the principal object of that
office, flourishes most when it is left to itself. Interest, the great
guide of commerce, is not a blind one. It is very well able to find its
own way; and its necessities are its best laws. But if it were possible,
in the nature of things, that the young should direct the old, and the
inexperienced instruct the knowing,--if a board in the state was the
best tutor for the counting-house,--if the desk ought to read lectures
to the anvil, and the pen to usurp the place of the shuttle,--yet in any
matter of regulation we know that board must act with as little
authority as skill. The prerogative of the crown is utterly inadequate
to the object; because all regulations are, in their nature, restric