e several princes and governments,
enlightened in the real sources of the public prosperity, and the true
interests of their subjects, attach themselves with emulation to revive
in their kingdoms and states the national industry, commerce, and
navigation; to encourage them, and promote them even by exclusive
privileges, or by heavy impositions upon foreign merchandizes;
privileges and impositions, which tend equally to the prejudice of the
commerce and the manufactures of our country, as your noble and grand
Lordships will easily recollect the examples in the Austrian states and
elsewhere.

That in the midst of these powers and nations, emulous or jealous, it is
impossible for the citizens of our Republic, however superior their
manufactures may be in quality and fineness, to resist a rivalry so
universal; especially considering the dearness of labour, caused by that
of the means of subsistence; which, in its turn, is a necessary
consequence of the taxes and imposts which the inhabitants of this State
pay in a greater number, and a higher rate, than in any other country,
by reason of her natural situation, and of its means to support itself;
so that by the continual operation of this principal, but irreparable
cause of decline, it is to be feared, that the impoverishment and the
diminution of the good citizens increasing with the want of employment,
the Dutch nation, heretofore the purveyor of all Europe, will be obliged
to content itself with the sale of its own productions in the interior
of the country; (and how much does not even this resource suffer by the
importation of foreign manufactures?) and that Leyden, lately so rich
and flourishing, will exhibit desolated quarters in its declining
streets; and its multitude, disgraced with want and misery; an affecting
proof of the sudden fall of countries formerly overflowing with
prosperity.

That, if we duly consider these motives, no citizen, whose heart is
upright, (as the petitioners assure themselves) much less your noble and
grand Lordships, whose good dispositions they acknowledge with
gratitude, will take it amiss, that we have fixed our eyes on the
present conjuncture of affairs, to enquire whether these times might not
furnish them some means of reviving the languishing manufactures of
Leyden; and that after a consideration well matured, they flatter
themselves with the hope (a hope which unprejudiced men will not regard
as a vain chimera) that in fact, by th