uman
race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and be assured you will
not be able to do it long with impunity.

But the population of this country, the great and growing population,
though a very important consideration, will lose much of its weight, if
not combined with other circumstances. The commerce of your colonies is
out of all proportion beyond the numbers of the people. This ground of
their commerce, indeed, has been trod some days ago, and with great
ability, by a distinguished person,[21] at your bar. This gentleman,
after thirty-five years,--it is so long since he first appeared at the
same place to plead for the commerce of Great Britain,--has come again
before you to plead the same cause, without any other effect of time
than that to the fire of imagination and extent of erudition, which even
then marked him as one of the first literary characters of his age, he
has added a consummate knowledge in the commercial interest of his
country, formed by a long course of enlightened and discriminating
experience.

Sir, I should be inexcusable in coming after such a person with any
detail, if a great part of the members who now fill the House had not
the misfortune to be absent when he appeared at your bar. Besides, Sir,
I propose to take the matter at periods of time somewhat different from
his. There is, if I mistake not, a point of view from whence, if you
will look at this subject, it is impossible that it should not make an
impression upon you.

I have in my hand two accounts: one a comparative state of the export
trade of England to its colonies, as it stood in the year 1704, and as
it stood in the year 1772; the other a state of the export trade of this
country to its colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the
whole trade of England to all parts of the world (the colonies included)
in the year 1704. They are from good vouchers: the latter period from
the accounts on your table; the earlier from an original manuscript of
Davenant, who first established the Inspector-General's office, which
has been ever since his time so abundant a source of Parliamentary
information.

The export trade to the colonies consists of three great branches: the
African, which, terminating almost wholly in the colonies, must be put
to the account of their commerce; the West Indian; and the North
American. All these are so interwoven, that the attempt to separate them
would tear to pieces the contexture of the