a perfon with any detail; if a great part of the members who now fill the house had not the misfortune to be abfent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir, I propofe to take the matter at periods of time fomewhat different from his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of view, from whence you will look at this fubject, it is impoffible that it should not make an impreffion upon you.

if

I have in my hand two accounts; one a comparative state of the export trade of England to its colonies, as it ftood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 1772. The other a state of the export trade of this country to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade of England to all parts of the world (the colonies included) in the year 1704. They are from good vouchers; the latter period from the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original manufcript of Davenant, who firft established the inspector general's office, which has been ever fince his time so abundant a fource of parliamentary information.

The export trade to the colonies confifts of three great branches. The African, which, terminating almost wholly in the colonies, must be put to the account of their commerce; the West Indian; and the North American. All these are fo interwoven, that the attempt to separate them, would tear to pieces the contexture of the whole; and

if not entirely destroy, would very much depreciate the value of all the parts. I therefore confider these three denominations to be, what in effect they are, one trade.

The trade to the colonies, taken on the export fide, at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1704, ftood thus:

In the year 1772, which I take as a middle year between the highest and lowest of those lately laid on your table, the account was as follows:

To North America, and the West

Indies

To Africa

To which if you add the export trade from Scotland, which had in 1704

1

From five hundred and odd thoufand, it has grown to fix millions. It has increafed no lefs than twelve-fold. This is the ftate of the colony trade, as compared with itself at these two periods, within this century;-and this is matter for meditation. But this is not all. Examine my fecond account. See how the export trade to the colonies alone in 1772 ftood in the other point of view, that is, as compared to the whole trade of England in 1704.

The whole export trade of England, including that to the colonies, in

The trade with America alone is now within lefs than 500,000l. of being equal to what this great commercial nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this century- with the whole world! If I had taken the largest year of thofe on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But, it will be faid, is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body? The reverse. It is the very food that has nourished every other part into

its prefent magnitude. Our general trade has been greatly augmented; and augmented more or less in almost every part to which it ever extended; but with this material difference; that of the fix millions which in the beginning of the century conftituted the whole mafs of our export commerce, the colony trade was but one twelfth part ; it is now (as a part of fixteen millions) confiderably more than a third of the whole. This is the relative proportion of the importance of the colonies at these two periods: and all reafoning con. cerning our mode of treating them must have this proportion as its bafis; or it is a reafoning weak, rotten, and sophistical.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot prevail on myself to hurry over this great confideration, It is good for us to be here. We ftand where we have an immense view of what is, and what is paft. Clouds indeed, and darkness, reft upon the future. Let us, however, before we defcend from this noble eminence, reflect that this growth of our national profperity has happened within the short period of the life of man. It has happened within fixtyeight years. There are those alive whose memory might touch the two extremities. For inftance, my Lord Bathurst might remember all the stages of the progrefs. He was in 1704 of an age at least to be made to comprehend fuch things. He was then old enough acta parentum jam legere,

et

et quæ fit poterit cognofcere virtus-Suppofe, Sir, that the angel of this aufpicious youth, foreseeing the many virtues, which made him one of the moft amiable, as he is one of the moft fortunate men of his age, had opened to him in vifion, that, when, in the fourth generation, the third prince of the house of Brunswick had fat twelve years on the throne of that nation, which (by the happy iffue of moderate and healing councils) was to be made Great Britain, he should fee his fon, Lord Chancellor of England, turn back the current of hereditary dignity to its fountain, and raise him to an higher rank of peerage, whilft he enriched the family with a new one - If amidst these bright and happy scenes of domestick honour and prosperity, that angel fhould have drawn up the curtain, and unfolded the rising glories of his country, and whilst he was gazing with admiration on the then commercial grandeur of England, the genius fhould point out to him a little speck, fcarce visible in the mass of the national intereft, a fmall feminal principle, rather than a formed body, and should tell him-" Young man, there "is America-which at this day ferves for little "more than to amuse you with stories of favage men, and uncouth manners; yet fhall, before you taste of death, fhew itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy "of the world. Whatever England has been growing to by a progreffive increase of improve

66

66

66

"ment,