Florence 273 



he vould give an answer, pretending that his were bespoken ; and 

 thei. assured us, as we had no air that promised good plucking, 

 thathis were engaged. At the Scudi di Francia, where there are 

 man> excellent and well furnished apartments, we found all we 

 wanted, but dearer than common, lo -paoli a head a day; our 

 merchant leaves us to-morrow morning for Leghorn, and the rest 

 of the company divide to find lodgings. Waited on Monsieur de 

 Strein^sberg, the Grand Duke's private secretary, for whom I 

 had le:ters : I am out of luck, for he is immersed in business and 

 engagements, as the court goes to Pisa to-morrow morning for 

 the winter. This, I suppose, is of no consequence to me, for 

 what court is there in the world that would give or receive in- 

 formation from a farmer ? The objects for which I travel are of 

 another complexion from those which smooth our paths in a 

 court. And yet the Grand Duke has the reputation of being, in 

 respect to the objects of his attention, the wisest prince in 

 Europe. So much for the sovereign of this country, — let me but 

 find some good farmers in it and I shall not be discontented. 



18/A. Fixed this morning in lodgings {del Sarte Inglesi via 

 dei Fossi), with the Marchionese, the Baron, and Mr. Stewart. 

 My friend, Dr. Sj-monds, had given me a letter to his excellency 

 Philippo Neri, who I found was dead; but hearing that his 

 brother, Signore Neri, was not only living, but president of the 

 GeorgofiLi society, I waited on him and gave him the letter that 

 was designed for his late brother; he received me politely, and 

 recollecting the name of Young being quoted by the Marquis de 

 Cassaux, in his Mechanism des Societes, and being informed that 

 I was the person, remarked that this ingenious writer had made 

 some use of my calculations to found his theory of the national 

 debt of England; a very curious subject, on which he should like 

 much to converse with me; and asked if I looked upon that 

 debt as so harmless. I told him that I thought Monsieur de 

 Cassaux's book full of original and ingenious remarks, and many 

 important ones, particularly his condemnation of the colonising 

 system ; but that as to the national debt of England, it originated 

 in the knavery of those who borrowed, and in the folly of those 

 who lent ; perpetuating taxes that took money from industrious 

 people, in order to give it to idle ones. That the liberty of 

 England enabled it to flourish beyond that of any other society 

 in the world, not because it had a national debt, but in spite of 

 so great an evil. — Well, Sir, he replied, / have just the idea of it 

 that you have, and I could not conceive how a country could pay 

 eight or nine millions of guineas a year, in interest, without being the 



