Dunkirk 89 



millions of people in the certain miseries of a war rather than 

 see the interest of those who consume fabrics preferred to the 

 interest of those who make them. The advantages reaped by 

 four-and-twenty millions of consumers are lighter than a feather 

 compared with the inconveniences sustained by half a million 

 of manufacturers. Meet many small carts in the town drawn 

 each by a dog: I was told by the owner of one, what appears to 

 me incredible, that his dog would draw 700 lb. half a league. 

 The wheels of these carts are very high relative to the height of 

 the dog, so that his chest is a good deal below the axle. 



6th. In leaving Lisle, the reparation of a bridge made me take 

 a road on the banks of the canal close under the works of the 

 citadel. They appear to be very numerous, and the situation 

 exceedingly advantageous, on a gently rising ground, sur- 

 rounded by low watery meadows, which may with ease be 

 drowned. Pass Darmentiers, a large paved town. Sleep at 

 Mont Cassel. — 30 miles. 



"ith. Cassel is on the summit of the only hill in Flanders. 

 They are now repairing the basin at Dunkirk, so famous in 

 history for an imperiousness in England which she must have 

 paid dearly for. Dunkirk, Gibraltar, and the statue of Louis 

 XIV. in the Place de Vidoire I place in the same political class 

 of national arrogance. Many men are now at work on this 

 basin, and when finished it will not contain more than twenty 

 or twenty-five frigates; and appears to an unlearned eye a 

 ridiculous object for the jealousy of a great nation, unless it 

 professes to be jealous of privateers. — I made inquiries con- 

 cerning the import of wool from England, and was assured that 

 it was a very trifling object. I may here observe that when I 

 left the town my little cloak-bag was examined as scrupulously 

 as if I had just left England with a cargo of prohibited goods, 

 and again at a fort two miles off. Dunkirk being a free port, the 

 custom-house is at the gates. What are we to think of our 

 woollen manufacturers in England, when suing for their wool- 

 bill of infamous memory, bringing one Thomas Wilkinson from 

 Dunkirk quay to the bar of the English House of Lords to swear 

 that wool passes from Dunkirk without entry, duty, or anything 

 being required, at double custom-houses, for a check on each 

 other, where they examine even a cloak-bag ? On such evidence 

 did our legislature, in the true shop-keeping spirit, pass an act of 

 fines, pains, and penalties against all the wool-growers of England. 

 Walk to Rossendal near the town, where Monsieur le Brun has 

 an improvement on the Dunes which he very obligingly showed 



