ct fluctuates, and no reason can be
assigned why it should not continue still to fluctuate. The author
chooses to allow nothing at all for this: he has taken an average of six
years of the war. He knew, for everybody knows, that the first three
years were on the whole rather unsuccessful; and that, in consequence of
this ill success, trade sunk, and navigation declined with it; but _that
grand delusion_ of the three last years turned the scale in our favor.
At the beginning of that war (as in the commencement of every war),
traders were struck with a sort of panic. Many went out of the
freighting business. But by degrees, as the war continued, the terror
wore off; the danger came to be better appreciated, and better provided
against; our trade was carried on in large fleets, under regular
convoys, and with great safety. The freighting business revived. The
ships were fewer, but much larger; and though the number decreased, the
tonnage was vastly augmented: insomuch that in 1761 the _British_
shipping had risen by the author's own account to 527,557 tons.--In the
last year he has given us of the peace, it amounted to no more than
494,772; that is, in the last year of the war it was 32,785 tons more
than in the correspondent year of his peace average. No year of the
peace exceeded it except one, and that but little.

The fair account of the matter is this. Our trade had, as we have just
seen, increased to so astonishing a degree in 1761, as to employ British
and foreign ships to the amount of 707,659 tons, which is 149,500 more
than we employed in the last year of the peace.--Thus our trade
increased more than a fifth; our British navigation had increased
likewise with this astonishing increase of trade, but was not able to
keep pace with it; and we added about 120,000 tons of foreign shipping
to the 60,000, which had been employed in the last year of the peace.
Whatever happened to our shipping in the former years of the war, this
would be no true state of the case at the time of the treaty. If we had
lost something in the beginning, we had then recovered, and more than
recovered, all our losses. Such is the ground of the doleful complaints
of the author, that _the carrying trade was wholly engrossed by the
neutral nations_.

I have done fairly, and even very moderately, in taking this year, and
not his average, as the standard of what might be expected in future,
had the war continued. The author will be compelled to a