a^6 polkical progrefs of Britain. ^pril iSi. 



" board no more than two hundred and Jifty-nine : 

 " For all those who had limbs and strength to walk 

 " out of Portsmouth, desei'ted, leaving behind them 

 " only such as were literally invalids, most of them 

 " being sixty years of age, and some of them upwards 

 " of seventy. Indeed it is difficult to conceive a more 

 *' moving scene than the embarkation of these un- 

 " happy veterans." As the book is in every body's 

 hands, I need not quote farther. About a thousand 

 persons were aboard that division of the squadron 

 which reached the south seas. Of these, not a fourth' 

 part returned to England. An able bodied man can. 

 perform work upon an average to the value of twen- 

 ty-five pounds per annum, and bis life may be rated 

 worth twelve years purchase. To the public he is 

 therefore worth perhaps three hundred pounds ; and 

 hence the lofs of seven hundred and fifty men is equal 

 to that of two hundred and twenty-fivfe thousand, 

 pounds. It is certain that the expence of equipping 

 this armament, and the value of the Ihips that were 

 destroyed, far exceeded that sum. By the account of 

 the commodore himself, " all the treasure taken by the 

 " Centurion, was not much Ihort of four hundred- 

 " thousand pounds ;" so that we may affirm without 

 presumption, that the Manilla galleon was a dear bar- 

 gain. Guthrie in his grammar, not only without evi- 

 dence, but in spite of it, has. generously augmented 

 the value of the prize to " about a million sterling." 

 As to the affair of Carthagena, referred to by Dr 

 Johnson, two quotations may serve in the place of an. 

 hundred. '♦ It vi^s X-how^Xu, th&t above tw£nty thoU" 

 *' send Britifh soldiers and seamen perilhed in the 



