or their evil incurred: but for the
sake of the principles of war, peace, trade, and finances. These
principles are of infinite moment. They must come again and again under
consideration; and it imports the public, of all things, that those of
its ministers be enlarged, and just, and well confirmed, upon all these
subjects. What notions this author entertains we shall see presently;
notions in my opinion very irrational, and extremely dangerous; and
which, if they should crawl from pamphlets into counsels, and be
realized from private speculation into national measures, cannot fail of
hastening and completing our ruin.

This author, after having paid his compliment to the showy appearances
of the late war in our favor, is in the utmost haste to tell you that
these appearances were _fallacious_, that they were no more than an
_imposition_.--I fear I must trouble the reader with a pretty long
quotation, in order to set before him the more clearly this author's
peculiar way of conceiving and reasoning:

"Happily (the K.) was then advised by ministers, who did not suffer
themselves to be dazzled by the glare of brilliant appearances; but,
knowing them to be _fallacious_, they wisely resolved to profit of their
splendor before our enemies should also _discover the imposition_.--The
increase in the exports was found to have been occasioned chiefly by the
demands of _our own fleets and armies_, and, instead of bringing wealth
to the nation, was to be paid for by oppressive taxes upon the people of
England. While the British seamen were consuming on board our men of war
and privateers, foreign ships and foreign seamen were employed in the
transportation of our merchandise; and the carrying trade, so great a
source of wealth and marine, _was entirely engrossed by the neutral
nations_. The number of British ships annually arriving in our ports was
reduced 1756 sail, containing 92,559 tons, on a medium of the six years'
war, compared with the six years of peace preceding it.--The conquest of
the Havannah had, indeed, stopped the remittance of specie from Mexico
to Spain; but it had not enabled England to seize it: on the contrary,
our merchants suffered by the detention of the galleons, as their
_correspondents in Spain were disabled from paying them for their goods
sent to America. The loss of the trade to Old Spain was a further bar to
an influx of specie_; and the attempt upon Portugal had not only
deprived us of an import of