eniis, opibusque, et festa pace virentem;
Vixque tenet lacrymas quia nil lacrymabile cernit.

It is in this spirit that some have looked upon those accidents that
cast an occasional damp upon trade. Their imaginations entail these
accidents upon us in perpetuity. We have had some bad harvests. This
must very disadvantageously affect the balance of trade, and the
navigation of a people, so large a part of whose commerce is in grain.
But, in knowing the cause, we are morally certain, that, according to
the course of events, it cannot long subsist. In the three last years,
we have exported scarcely any grain; in good years, that export hath
been worth twelve hundred thousand pounds and more; in the two last
years, far from exporting, we have been obliged to import to the amount
perhaps of our former exportation. So that in this article the balance
must be 2,000,000_l._ against us; that is, one million in the ceasing of
gain, the other in the increase of expenditure. But none of the author's
promises or projects could have prevented this misfortune; and, thank
God, we do not want him or them to relieve us from it; although, if his
friends should now come into power, I doubt not but they will be ready
to take credit for any increase of trade or excise, that may arise from
the happy circumstance of a good harvest.

This connects with his loud laments and melancholy prognostications
concerning the high price of the necessaries of life and the products of
labor. With all his others, I deny this fact; and I again call upon him
to prove it. Take average and not accident, the grand and first
necessary of life is cheap in this country; and that too as weighed, not
against labor, which is its true counterpoise, but against money. Does
he call the price of wheat at this day, between 32 and 40 shillings per
quarter in London dear?[64] He must know that fuel (an object of the
highest order in the necessaries of life, and of the first necessity in
almost every kind of manufacture) is in many of our provinces cheaper
than in any part of the globe. Meat is on the whole not excessively
dear, whatever its price may be at particular times and from particular
accidents. If it has had anything like an uniform rise, this enhancement
may easily be proved not to be owing to the increase of taxes, but to
uniform increase of consumption and of money. Diminish the latter, and
meat in your markets will be sufficiently cheap in account, but much