sonable request: And I shall think there is still some
spirit left in the Nation, when I read a vote to this purpose:
"Resolved, _nemine contradicente_, That this House will, for the future,
wear no clothes but such as are made of Irish growth, or of Irish
manufacture, nor will permit their wives or children to wear any other;
and that they will to the utmost endeavour to prevail with their
friends, relations, dependants and tenants to follow their example." And
if at the same time they could banish tea and coffee, and china-ware,
out of their families, and force their wives to chat their scandal over
an infusion of sage, or other wholesome domestic vegetables, we might
possibly be able to subsist, and pay our absentees, pensioners,
generals, civil officers, appeals, colliers, temporary travellers,
students, schoolboys, splenetic visitors of Bath, Tunbridge, and Epsom,
with all other smaller drains, by sending our crude unwrought goods to
England, and receiving from thence and all other countries nothing but
what is fully manufactured, and keep a few potatoes and oatmeal for our
own subsistence.

I have been for a dozen years past wisely prognosticating the present
condition of this Kingdom, which any human creature of common sense
could foretell with as little sagacity as myself. My meaning is that a
consumptive body must needs die, which hath spent all its spirits and
received no nourishment. Yet I am often tempted to pity when I hear the
poor farmer and cottager lamenting the hardness of the times, and
imputing them either to one or two ill seasons, which better climates
than ours are more exposed to, or to the scarcity of silver which to a
Nation of Liberty would be only a slight and temporary inconveniency, to
be removed at a month's warning.

Ap., 1729.

OBSERVATIONS,

OCCASIONED BY READING A PAPER ENTITLED, "THE

CASE OF THE WOOLLEN MANUFACTURES

OF DUBLIN," ETC.[102]

The paper called "The Case of the Woollen Manufactures," &c. is very
well drawn up. The reasonings of the authors are just, the facts true,
and the consequences natural. But his censure of those seven vile
citizens, who import such a quantity of silk stuffs and woollen cloth
from England, is an hundred times gentler than enemies to their country
deserve; because I think no punishment in this world can be great enough
for them, without immediate repentance and amendment. But, after all,
the writer of that paper hath very lightly tou