is hardly so much as seen in the
custom-house entries; and it is not of less annual value to this nation
than 400,000_l._ 6thly. The quality of your imports must be considered
as well as the quantity. To state the whole of the foreign import _as
loss_, is exceedingly absurd. All the iron, hemp, flax, cotton, Spanish
wool, raw silk, woollen and linen-yarn, which we import, are by no means
to be considered as the matter of a merely luxurious consumption; which
is the idea too generally and loosely annexed to our import article.
These above mentioned are materials of industry, not of luxury, which
are wrought up here, in many instances, to ten times, and more, of their
original value. Even where they are not subservient to our exports, they
still add to our internal wealth, which consists in the stock of useful
commodities, as much as in gold and silver. In looking over the specific
articles of our export and import, I have often been astonished to see
for how small a part of the supply of our consumption, either luxurious
or convenient, we are indebted to nations properly foreign to us.

These considerations are entirely passed over by the author; they have
been but too much neglected by most who have speculated on this subject.
But they ought never to be omitted by those who mean to come to anything
like the true state of the British trade. They compensate, and they more
than compensate, everything which the author can cut off with any
appearance of reason for the over-entry of British goods; and they
restore to us that balance of four millions, which the author has
thought proper on such a very poor and limited comprehension of the
object to reduce to 2,500,000_l._

In general this author is so circumstanced, that to support his theory
he is obliged to assume his facts: and then, if you allow his facts,
they will not support his conclusions. What if all he says of the state
of this balance were true? did not the same objections always lie to
custom-house entries? do they defalcate more from the entries of 1766
than from those of 1754? If they prove us ruined, we were always ruined.
Some ravens have always indeed croaked out this kind of song. They have
a malignant delight in presaging mischief, when they are not employed in
doing it: they are miserable and disappointed at every instance of the
public prosperity. They overlook us like the malevolent being of the
poet:--

Tritonida conspicit arcem
Ing