turally
influence men unbought, their reason and their prejudices, these two
principles had a fair conflict, and prejudice was obliged to give way to
reason. A majority appeared, on a division, in favor of the
propositions.

As these proceedings got out of doors, Glasgow and Manchester, and, I
think, Liverpool, began to move, but in a manner much more slow and
languid than formerly. Nothing, in my opinion, would have been less
difficult than entirely to have overborne their opposition. The London
West India trade was, as on the former occasion, so on this, perfectly
liberal and perfectly quiet; and there is abroad so much respect for the
united wisdom of the House, when supposed to act upon a fair view of a
political situation, that I scarcely ever remember any considerable
uneasiness out of doors, when the most active members, and those of most
property and consideration in the minority, have joined themselves to
the administration. Many factious people in the towns I mentioned began,
indeed, to revile Lord North, and to reproach his neutrality as
treacherous and ungrateful to those who had so heartily and so warmly
entered into all his views with regard to America. That noble lord,
whose decided character it is to give way to the latest and nearest
pressure, without any sort of regard to distant consequences of any
kind, thought fit to appear, on this signification of the pleasure of
those his worthy friends and partisans, and, putting himself at the head
of the _posse scaccarii_, wholly regardless of the dignity and
consistency of our miserable House, drove the propositions entirely out
of doors by a majority newly summoned to duty.

In order to atone to Ireland for this gratification to Manchester, he
graciously permitted, or rather forwarded, two bills,--that for
encouraging the growth of tobacco, and that for giving a bounty on
exportation of hemp from Ireland. They were brought in by two very
worthy members, and on good principles; but I was sorry to see them,
and, after expressing my doubts of their propriety, left the House.
Little also [else?] was said upon them. My objections were two: the
first, that the cultivation of those weeds (if one of them could be at
all cultivated to profit) was adverse to the introduction of a good
course of agriculture; the other, that the encouragement given to them
tended to establish that mischievous policy of considering Ireland as a
country of staple, and a producer of raw