TUESDAY.

AGGRANDISEMENT.

P. WHAT is the support of grandeur, George?

G. Riches, Sir.

P. And what of riches?

G. Trade.

P. And what of trade?

G. A good market.

P. If then old farmer Davis have a good market for his wool, and corn, and cattle, and butter and cheese, he can afford to pay his landlord more rent, and to lay out more money with tradesmen, than if he had no way to dispose of his produce? G. Certainly.

P. And the tradesmen can afford to pay a higher rent for their shops and houses with Davis's custom than without it?

G. No doubt.

P. The landlord will have a larger income, and can afford to contribute more to his own and the national grandeur ?

G. Clearly.

P. Does it not seem, then, that the grandeur of

a state rises naturally out of its wealth, its wealth out of commerce, and its commerce out of consumption.

G. It should seem so.

P. Three articles, then, present themselves to our view as worthy of national attention; the production, the preparation, and the consumption of marketable commodities.

G. Each, I perceive already, an article of considerable magnitude.

P. And therefore the more worthy of our investigation. By the subject of our conversation, marketable commodities, I mean any thing that will fetch money; gold and clay, timber and trinkets, animals and vegetables, materials raw and manufactured; the list would fill a volume.

G. I suppose Great Britain of the staple articles of universal traffic is the most productive country in the world.

P. Is, did you say? Have you forgotten your tour with me last summer into Scotland and Wales? G. I beg pardon: I ought to have said, might be.

P. What I inquire is this, do the lands and the quarries, the forests and the mines, the rivers and the coasts, produce what they might be made to produce with proper management?

G. By no means?

P. What is the chief cause?

G. I imagine there are several causes: but the principal, probably, is poverty.

P. In few and partial cases an estate may be unproductive from inattention, ignorance, negligence, dissipation, indolence, and so on: but in cases of this magnitude, private fortunes are not equal to the undertakings with any probability of Great objects like these require national efforts, parliamentary aids, noble exertions. Had a few of the millions wasted in war, heen employed in these beneficial purposes, Britain might have been by this time a garden of pleasure, a storehouse of plenty !

success.

G. So, we have spent millions to conquer desarts at the end of the globe, and left a fruitful country to become a desart at home.

P. Of thirty-nine millions of acres in England, near ten millions, or a fourth part of the whole consists of heaths, moors, mountains, and barren lands, and this exclusive of woods, forests, parks, commons and roads. Were these recovered to the growth of grain, hemp, flax, hops, rape, saffron, potatoes, and so on, or to the support of animals of any kind in the greatest quantities they could bear, I should call all this production.

G. Ten millions of acres is a colony, and the cultivation of it attainable without blood, with half the number of men employed to shed it, and at a small expence all returnable to the community, and vested ultimately in the state.

P. In spite of neglect, and in spite of all the obstacles to improvements, which remnants of the the old feudal system oppose against them, our country is rich in the production of marketable

commodities, and these several of them, such as we now fetch from foreign markets.

G. I suppose, you think, Sir, we might turn the scale, and carry our productions to their markets.

P. This implies what I call preparation. If you could open a lead mine, or set up a pottery, you would soon see a town rise round it. Grow hemp or flax, and spinners and weavers will surround you, and prepare it for market, and the same may be said of almost all raw materials. Industrious manufacturers enrich a state both by their labour and consumption; but these arts flourish only under mild and serene governments, where labourers and artists are secured and set at ease in their liberties and properties, and where their honest endeavours are not blasted by burdensome

taxes.

G. What you call preparations include not only manufactures, but all things necessary to be done in order to bring productions to market?

P. Exactly so. Our manufactures, both of domestick and foreign materials, as wool, leather, metals, linens, cotton, glass, paper, and so on, may all be extended much further than they are, and with infinite advantage to the state.

G. And the increase of them would increase land and water carriage, and all the workmen and materials necessary to both; and, above all, seamen and shipping, the defence and glory of Britain.

P. Undoubtedly: but there is one fatal mistake which lies at the bottom of all our ill policy in these articles, and that is, that necessity is the principle which sets the poor a working.

G. What is the true principle of the industry of the poor?

P. Encouragement. Restraints of trade should be removed-duties taken off-prices of raw materials reduced-bounties judiciously distributed -exportation promoted-immunities from some public offices or services granted-and so on. All these require great and national aids.

P. Suppose I kept a nominal gardener, whose place was a sinecure, with a salary of three hundred a year, could not I dismiss him, and afford to employ two hundred a year to set the poor to work till they could support themselves, and save a hundred a year myself too?

G. You think, then, that it is not the poverty of the state, but the misapplication of public money, that keeps this poor country in its present dejected state?

P. What signifies what I think? All wise men in England who are not interested in living upon public money, and, to their immortal glory, some who are, think so.

G. I have heard say, that the destruction of the youth of this country proceeds from their fixing their eye on public money.

P. I believe it. How much

money, think you,