aded. They did not
in the least impair the consumption: it has grown under them. It appears
that, upon the whole, the people did not feel so much inconvenience from
the new duties as to oblige them to take refuge in the private brewery.
Quite the contrary happened in both these respects in the reign of King
William; and it happened from much slighter impositions.[62] No people
can long consume a commodity for which they are not well able to pay. An
enlightened reader laughs at the inconsistent chimera of our author, of
a people universally luxurious, and at the same time oppressed with
taxes and declining in trade. For my part, I cannot look on these duties
as the author does. He sees nothing but the burden. I can perceive the
burden as well as he; but I cannot avoid contemplating also the strength
that supports it. From thence I draw the most comfortable assurances of
the future vigor, and the ample resources, of this great, misrepresented
country; and can never prevail on myself to make complaints which have
no cause, in order to raise hopes which have no foundation.

When a representation is built on truth and nature, one member supports
the other, and mutual lights are given and received from every part.
Thus, as our manufacturers have not deserted, nor the manufacture left
us, nor the consumption declined, nor the revenue sunk; so neither has
trade, which is at once the result, measure, and cause of the whole, in
the least decayed, as our author has thought proper sometimes to affirm,
constantly to suppose, as if it were the most indisputable of all
propositions. The reader will see below the comparative state of our
trade[63] in three of the best years before our increase of debt and
taxes, and with it the three last years since the author's date of our
ruin.

In the last three years the whole of our exports was between 44 and 45
millions. In the three years preceding the war, it was no more than from
35 to 36 millions. The average balance of the former period was
3,706,000_l._; of the latter, something above four millions. It is true,
that whilst the impressions of the author's destructive war continued,
our trade was greater than it is at present. One of the necessary
consequences of the peace was, that France must gradually recover a part
of those markets of which she had been originally in possession.
However, after all these deductions, still the gross trade in the worst
year of the present is better than in