sion that
their taxes will be raised the year following. The annual income of the
estates of a great many commoners in England amounts to two hundred
thousand livres, and yet these do not think it beneath them to plough the
lands which enrich them, and on which they enjoy their liberty.

LETTER X.--ON TRADE

As trade enriched the citizens in England, so it contributed to their
freedom, and this freedom on the other side extended their commerce,
whence arose the grandeur of the State. Trade raised by insensible
degrees the naval power, which gives the English a superiority over the
seas, and they now are masters of very near two hundred ships of war.
Posterity will very probably be surprised to hear that an island whose
only produce is a little lead, tin, fuller's-earth, and coarse wool,
should become so powerful by its commerce, as to be able to send, in
1723, three fleets at the same time to three different and far distanced
parts of the globe. One before Gibraltar, conquered and still possessed
by the English; a second to Portobello, to dispossess the King of Spain
of the treasures of the West Indies; and a third into the Baltic, to
prevent the Northern Powers from coming to an engagement.

At the time when Louis XIV. made all Italy tremble, and that his armies,
which had already possessed themselves of Savoy and Piedmont, were upon
the point of taking Turin; Prince Eugene was obliged to march from the
middle of Germany in order to succour Savoy. Having no money, without
which cities cannot be either taken or defended, he addressed himself to
some English merchants. These, at an hour and half's warning, lent him
five millions, whereby he was enabled to deliver Turin, and to beat the
French; after which he wrote the following short letter to the persons
who had disbursed him the above-mentioned sums: "Gentlemen, I have
received your money, and flatter myself that I have laid it out to your
satisfaction." Such a circumstance as this raises a just pride in an
English merchant, and makes him presume (not without some reason) to
compare himself to a Roman citizen; and, indeed, a peer's brother does
not think traffic beneath him. When the Lord Townshend was Minister of
State, a brother of his was content to be a City merchant; and at the
time that the Earl of Oxford governed Great Britain, a younger brother
was no more than a factor in Aleppo, where he chose to live, and where he
died. This custom, which beg