s on the footsteps of a
neglected people, it was on the fund of unconstrained poverty, it was on
the acquisitions of unregulated industry, that anything which deserves
the name of a colony in that province has been formed. It has been
formed by overflowings from the exuberant population of New England, and
by emigration from other parts of Nova Scotia of fugitives from the
protection of the Board of Trade.

But if all of these things were not more than sufficient to prove to you
the inutility of that expensive establishment, I would desire you to
recollect, Sir, that those who may be very ready to defend it are very
cautious how they employ it,--cautious how they employ it even in
appearance and pretence. They are afraid they should lose the benefit of
its influence in Parliament, if they deemed to keep it up for any other
purpose. If ever there were commercial points of great weight, and most
closely connected with our dependencies, they are those which have been
agitated and decided in Parliament since I came into it. Which of the
innumerable regulations since made had their origin or their improvement
in the Board of Trade? Did any of the several East India bills which
have been successively produced since 1767 originate there? Did any one
dream of referring them, or any part of them, thither? Was anybody so
ridiculous as even to think of it? If ever there was an occasion on
which the Board was fit to be consulted, it was with regard to the acts
that were preludes to the American war, or attendant on its
commencement. Those acts were full of commercial regulations, such as
they were: the Intercourse Bill; the Prohibitory Bill; the Fishery
Bill. If the Board was not concerned in such things, in what particular
was it thought fit that it should be concerned? In the course of all
these bills through the House, I observed the members of that board to
be remarkably cautious of intermeddling. They understood decorum better;
they know that matters of trade and plantations are no business of
theirs.

There were two very recent occasions, which, if the idea of any use for
the Board had not been extinguished by prescription, appeared loudly to
call for their interference.

When commissioners were sent to pay his Majesty's and our dutiful
respects to the Congress of the United States, a part of their powers
under the commission were, it seems, of a commercial nature. They were
authorized, in the most ample and undefined mann