convenient houses, where are now only huts; draining lands, or rendering
those, which are now barren, of some use; should we not be gainers, and
provide more for health, pleasure, and long life, compared with the
consequences of the tea-trade?"

Our riches would be much better employed to these purposes; but if this
project does not please, let us first resolve to save our money, and we
shall, afterwards, very easily find ways to spend it.

REPLY TO A PAPER IN THE GAZETTEER OF MAY 26, 1757 [5].

It is observed, in Le Sage's Gil Bias, that an exasperated author is not
easily pacified. I have, therefore, very little hope of making my peace
with the writer of the Eight Days' Journey; indeed so little, that I
have long deliberated, whether I should not rather sit silently down,
under his displeasure, than aggravate my misfortune, by a defence, of
which my heart forbodes the ill success. Deliberation is often useless.
I am afraid, that I have, at last, made the wrong choice, and that I
might better have resigned my cause, without a struggle, to time and
fortune, since I shall run the hazard of a new oifence, by the necessity
of asking him, why he is angry.

Distress and terrour often discover to us those faults, with which we
should never have reproached ourselves in a happy state. Yet, dejected
as I am, when I review the transaction between me and this writer, I
cannot find, that I have been deficient in reverence. When his book was
first printed, he hints, that I procured a sight of it before it was
published. How the sight of it was procured, I do not now very exactly
remember; but, if my curiosity was greater than my prudence, if I laid
rash hands on the fatal volume, I have surely suffered, like him who
burst the box, from which evil rushed into the world.

I took it, however, and inspected it, as the work of an author not
higher than myself; and was confirmed in my opinion, when I found, that
these letters were _not written to be printed_. I concluded, however,
that, though not _written_ to be _printed_, they were _printed_ to be
_read_, and inserted one of them in the collection of November last. Not
many days after, I received a note, informing me, that I ought to have
waited for a more correct edition. This injunction was obeyed. The
edition appeared, and I supposed myself at liberty to tell my thoughts
upon it, as upon any other book, upon a royal manifesto, or an act of
parliament. But see the fate o