to this
country, administration saw the mischief and folly of a plan of
indiscriminate restraint. They applied their remedy to that part where
the disease existed, and to that only: on this idea they established
regulations, far more likely to check the dangerous, clandestine trade
with Hamburg and Holland, than this author's friends, or any of their
predecessors had ever done.

The friends of the author have a method surely a little whimsical in all
this sort of discussions. They have made an innumerable multitude of
commercial regulations, at which the trade of England exclaimed with one
voice, and many of which have been altered on the unanimous opinion of
that trade. Still they go on, just as before, in a sort of droning
panegyric on themselves, talking of these regulations as prodigies of
wisdom; and, instead of appealing to those who are most affected and the
best judges, they turn round in a perpetual circle of their own
reasonings and pretences; they hand you over from one of their own
pamphlets to another: "See," say they, "this demonstrated in the
'Regulations of the Colonies.'" "See this satisfactorily proved in 'The
Considerations.'" By and by we shall have another: "See for this 'The
State of the Nation.'" I wish to take another method in vindicating the
opposite system. I refer to the petitions of merchants for these
regulations; to their thanks when they were obtained; and to the strong
and grateful sense they have ever since expressed of the benefits
received under that administration.

All administrations have in their commercial regulations been generally
aided by the opinion of some merchants; too frequently by that of a few,
and those a sort of favorites: they have been directed by the opinion of
one or two merchants, who were to merit in flatteries, and to be paid in
contracts; who frequently advised, not for the general good of trade,
but for their private advantage. During the administration of which this
author complains, the meetings of merchants upon the business of trade
were numerous and public; sometimes at the house of the Marquis of
Rockingham; sometimes at Mr. Dowdeswell's; sometimes at Sir George
Savile's, a house always open to every deliberation favorable to the
liberty or the commerce of his country. Nor were these meetings confined
to the merchants of London. Merchants and manufacturers were invited
from all the considerable towns in England. They conferred with the
ministers and