tive
of some liberty. In the reign, indeed, of Charles the First, the
Council, or Committees of Council, were never a moment unoccupied with
affairs of trade. But even where they had no ill intention, (which was
sometimes the case,) trade and manufacture suffered infinitely from
their injudicious tampering. But since that period, whenever regulation
is wanting, (for I do not deny that sometimes it may be wanting,)
Parliament constantly sits; and Parliament alone is competent to such
regulation. We want no instruction from boards of trade, or from any
other board; and God forbid we should give the least attention to their
reports! Parliamentary inquiry is the only mode of obtaining
Parliamentary information. There is more real knowledge to be obtained
by attending the detail of business in the committees above stairs than
ever did come, or ever will come, from any board in this kingdom, or
from all of them together. An assiduous member of Parliament will not be
the worse instructed there for not being paid a thousand a year for
learning his lesson. And now that I speak of the committees above
stairs, I must say, that, having till lately attended them a good deal,
I have observed that no description of members give so little
attendance, either to communicate or to obtain instruction upon matters
of commerce, as the honorable members of the grave Board of Trade. I
really do not recollect that I have ever seen one of them in that sort
of business. Possibly some members may have better memories, and may
call to mind some job that may have accidentally brought one or other of
them, at one time or other, to attend a matter of commerce.

This board, Sir, has had both its original formation and its
regeneration in a job. In a job it was conceived, and in a job its
mother brought it forth. It made one among those showy and specious
impositions which one of the experiment-making administrations of
Charles the Second held out to delude the people, and to be substituted
in the place of the real service which they might expect from a
Parliament annually sitting. It was intended, also, to corrupt that
body, whenever it should be permitted to sit. It was projected in the
year 1668, and it continued in a tottering and rickety childhood for
about three or four years: for it died in the year 1673, a babe of as
little hopes as ever swelled the bills of mortality in the article of
convulsed or overlaid children who have hardly stepped over