S76 SUh. [April,/ 



tiilation rather, and the silk folks, like others, are unable to find a 

 market for their excessive productions, or to renew their discounts, and 

 are sucked up in the vortex of general destruction. Manufacturers of 

 all kinds generally have as madly employed their credit, as injudiciously 

 overshot the mark, and are as fatally feeling the effects ; but unluckily 

 they can conjure up no plausible pretence to taunt the government with 

 the mischief, and are forced to be silent. But the silk-men eagerly seize 

 upon the well-timed excuse ; they dismiss their workmen at the ver)'^ 

 moment when they have no longer occasion for them, and when their 

 resources utterly fail them, and fling the cause and the blame in the teeth 

 of the government ; while the country — forgetting that the very same 

 cause, which weighs down others, is pressing equally and justly upon 

 them — listen to the clamorous Imputation, and though little inclined to 

 sympathize with their misery, are yet ready to join in ascribing their 

 distress to the minister's adventurous innovations. 



To hear these silk-men, we must conclude that, had it not been for 

 these fatal measures of the government, their trade would have gone 

 successfully onward ; that the general destruction of credit would 

 kindly have spared them ; that they would still have found money to pay 

 their men, a market for all their goods ; and proved the only people who 

 had traded on available and actual capital. 



We must stop. Our opinion is briefly this : if the ministers were really 

 resolved on attempting to carry into execution the principles of Free 

 Trade, they should have ventured on throwing the trade fairlj' open at 

 once ; or if that were not, with any justice, practicable, as we believe it 

 was not, they should have waited for more propitious times, till in short 

 they were strong enough to renovate the decrepit condition of the times, 

 that is, to reduce the amount of taxation at least two-thirds ; throw open 

 the ports generally, free for exports and imports ; abolish the customs, 

 the excise, and all petty vexatious imposts ; levy but one general tax for 

 the whole expenses of the state, and that one upon property. If, on the 

 other hand, revenue was the object, by augmenting the Custom-house 

 receipts, and withdrawing some pai"t or all of the preventive-service, 

 then they should have admitted foreign silks at a duty of 10 or 15 per 

 cent. They would thus have secured the full amount of that duty, and 

 annihilated smuggling, so far at least as it depended upon silks. 



As it is, they do neither one thing nor the other : they neither stir an 

 inch in the track of Free Trade, nor will they augment the revenue. It 

 is one of the half-measures that pass with some under the names of 

 sound policy, statesman-like conduct, practical wisdom, and so on ; and, 

 like half-measures in moral matters, will come to nothing, or make 

 bad worse. 



EXTEMPORE ON THE LATE "WAR. 



Whene'er contending Princes fight. 



For private pique or public right, 



Armies are raised — the fleets are mann'd — 



The)' combat both by sea and land. 



When after many battles past. 



Both, tir'd with blows, make peace at last. 



What is it, after all, the people get ? 



Why — ividows, taxes, wooden-leg/:, end debt. 



