petitions not
produced by panic apprehensions of imaginary dangers, or distant
prospects of inconveniencies barely possible, but by the certain
foresight of immediate calamities, the total destruction of trade, and
the sudden desolation of flourishing provinces.

By prohibiting the exportation of rice, we shall, sir, in one year,
reduce the colony of South Carolina below the possibility of subsisting;
the chief product of that country, the product which induced us
originally to plant it, and with which all its trade is carried on, is
rice. With rice the inhabitants of that province purchase all the other
necessaries of life, and among them the manufactures of our own country.
This rice is carried by our merchants to other parts of Europe, and sold
again for large profit.

That this trade is very important appears from the number of ships which
it employs, and which, without lading, must rot in the harbours, if rice
be not excepted from the general prohibition. Without this exception,
sir, it is not easy to say what numbers, whose stations appear very
different, and whose employments have no visible relation to each other,
will be at once involved in calamity, reduced to sudden distress, and
obliged to seek new methods of supporting their families. The sailor,
the merchant, the shipwright, the manufacturer, with all the
subordinations of employment that depend upon them, all that supply them
with materials, or receive advantage from their labours, almost all the
subjects of the British crown, must suffer, at least, in some degree, by
the ruin of Carolina.

Nor ought the danger of the sugar islands, and other provinces, less to
alarm our apprehensions, excite our compassion, or employ our
consideration, since nothing is more evident than that by passing this
bill without the exceptions which their petitions propose, we shall
reduce one part of our colonies to the want of bread, and confine the
other to live on nothing else; for they subsist by the exchange of those
products to which the soil of each country is peculiarly adapted: one
province affords no corn, and the other supplies its inhabitants with
corn only.

The necessity of expediting this bill, however it has been exaggerated,
is not so urgent but that we may be allowed time sufficient to consider
for what purpose it is to be passed, and to recollect that nothing is
designed by it, but to hinder our enemies from being supplied from the
British dominions with