le and potatoes in great quantity are imported from England as
well as corn, and our foreign trade is little more than importation of
French wine, for which I am told we pay ready money.

Now if all this be true, upon which I could easily enlarge, I would be
glad to know by what secret method it is that we grow a rich and
flourishing people, without liberty, trade, manufactures, inhabitants,
money, or the privilege of coining; without industry, labour or
improvement of lands, and with more than half of the rent and profits of
the whole Kingdom, annually exported, for which we receive not a single
farthing: And to make up all this, nothing worth mentioning, except the
linen of the North, a trade casual, corrupted, and at mercy, and some
butter from Cork. If we do flourish, it must be against every law of
Nature and Reason, like the thorn at Glastonbury, that blossoms in the
midst of Winter.

Let the worthy Commissioners who come from England ride round the
Kingdom, and observe the face of Nature, or the face of the natives, the
improvement of the land, the thriving numerous plantations, the noble
woods, the abundance and vicinity of country seats, the commodious
farmers houses and barns, the towns and villages, where everybody is
busy and thriving with all kind of manufactures, the shops full of goods
wrought to perfection, and filled with customers, the comfortable diet
and dress, and dwellings of the people, the vast numbers of ships in our
harbours and docks, and shipwrights in our sea-port towns. The roads
crowded with carriers laden with rich manufactures, the perpetual
concourse to and fro of pompous equipages.

With what envy and admiration would these gentlemen return from so
delightful a progress? What glorious reports would they make when they
went back to England?

But my heart is too heavy to continue this journey[54] longer, for it is
manifest that whatever stranger took such a journey, would be apt to
think himself travelling in Lapland or Ysland,[55] rather than in a
country so favoured by Nature as ours, both in fruitfulness of soil, and
temperature of climate. The miserable dress, and diet, and dwelling of
the people. The general desolation in most parts of the Kingdom. The old
seats of the nobility and gentry all in ruins, and no new ones in their
stead. The families of farmers who pay great rents, living in filth and
nastiness upon butter-milk and potatoes, without a shoe or stocking to
their feet,