ot to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the
reason is but a part, and by no means the greatest part.

Founding the repeal on this basis, it was judged proper to lay before
Parliament the whole detail of the American affairs, as fully as it had
been laid before the ministry themselves. Ignorance of those affairs had
misled Parliament. Knowledge alone could bring it into the right road.
Every paper of office was laid upon the table of the two Houses; every
denomination of men, either of America, or connected with it by office,
by residence, by commerce, by interest, even by injury; men of civil and
military capacity, officers of the revenue, merchants, manufacturers of
every species, and from every town in England, attended at the bar. Such
evidence never was laid before Parliament. If an emulation arose among
the ministers and members of Parliament, as the author rightly
observes,[92] for the repeal of this act, as well as for the other
regulations, it was not on the confident assertions, the airy
speculations, or the vain promises of ministers, that it arose. It was
the sense of Parliament on the evidence before them. No one so much as
suspects that ministerial allurements or terrors had any share in it.

Our author is very much displeased, that so much credit was given to the
testimony of merchants. He has a habit of railing at them: and he may,
if he pleases, indulge himself in it. It will not do great mischief to
that respectable set of men. The substance of their testimony was, that
their debts in America were very great: that the Americans declined to
pay them, or to renew their orders, whilst this act continued: that,
under these circumstances, they despaired of the recovery of their
debts, or the renewal of their trade in that country: that they
apprehended a general failure of mercantile credit. The manufacturers
deposed to the same general purpose, with this addition, that many of
them had discharged several of their artificers; and, if the law and the
resistance to it should continue, must dismiss them all.

This testimony is treated with great contempt by our author. It must be,
I suppose, because it was contradicted by the plain nature of things.
Suppose then that the merchants had, to gratify this author, given a
contrary evidence; and had deposed, that while America remained in a
state of resistance, whilst four million of debt remained unpaid, whilst
the course of justice was suspended for