the helps to industry that ever were
invented, there be any more secure, more easy, and more effectual
than a national bank?

107. Qu. Whether medicines do not recommend themselves by
experience, even though their reasons be obscure? But whether reason
and fact are not equally clear in favour of this political medicine?

108. Qu. Whether, although the prepossessions about gold and silver
have taken deep root, yet the example of our Colonies in America
doth not make it as plain as day-light that they are not so
necessary to the wealth of a nation as the vulgar of all ranks
imagine?

109. Qu. Whether it be not evident that we may maintain a much
greater inward and outward commerce, and be five times richer than
we are, nay, and our bills abroad be of far greater credit, though
we had not one ounce of gold or silver in the whole island?

110. Qu. Whether wrongheaded maxims, customs, and fashions are not
sufficient to destroy any people which hath so few resources as the
inhabitants of Ireland.

111. Qu. Whether it would not be a horrible thing to see our matrons
make dress and play their chief concern?

112. Qu. Whether our ladies might not as well endow monasteries as
wear Flanders lace? And whether it be not true that Popish nuns are
maintained by Protestant contributions?

113. Qu. Whether England, which hath a free trade, whatever she
remits for foreign luxury with one hand, doth not with the other
receive much more from abroad? Whether, nevertheless, this nation
would not be a gainer, if our women would content themselves with
the same moderation in point of expense as the English ladies?

114. Qu. But whether it be not a notorious truth that our Irish
ladies are on a foot, as to dress, with those of five times their
fortune in England?

115. Qu. Whether it be not even certain that the matrons of this
forlorn country send out a greater proportion of its wealth, for
fine apparel, than any other females on the whole surface of this
terraqueous globe?

116. Qu. Whether the expense, great as it is, be the greatest evil;
but whether this folly may not produce many other follies, an entire
derangement of domestic life, absurd manners, neglect of duties, bad
mothers, a general corruption in both sexes?

117. Qu. Whether therefore a tax on all gold and silver in apparel,
on all foreign laces and silks, may not raise a fund for the bank,
and at the same time have other salutary effects on the public?

118. Qu