nfatuation must have possessed us? that we are in all haste running
back into the old, stupid, and dull unthinking state, and growing fond of
anything, nay of everything that is injurious to our own commerce, and be
it as ruinous as it will to our own poor, and to our own manufactures;
nay, though we see our trade sick and languishing, and our poor starving
before our eyes; and know that we ourselves are the only cause of it, are
yet so obstinately and unalterable averse to our own manufacture, and fond
of novelties and trifles, that we will not wear our own goods, but will at
any hazard make use of things foreign to us, the labour and advantage of
strangers, pagans, negroes, or any kind of people, rather than our own.

Unhappy temper, unknown in any nation but ours! The wiser pagans and
Mahometans, natives of India, Persia, China, Japan, Siam, Pegu, act
otherwise; wherever we find any people in these parts, we find them
clothed with their own manufacture, whether of silk, cotton, herba, or of
whatever other materials they were made; nor to this day have our nicest
or finest manufactures, though perfectly new to them, (and novelties we
see take with us to a frenzy and distraction) touched their fancies, or so
much as tempted them to wear them; all our endeavours to persuade them
have been in vain; but with us, any new fancy, any far-fetched novelty,
however antick, however extravagant in price, nay the dearer the more
prevailing, presently touches our wandering fancy, and makes us cast off
our finest and most agreeable produce, the fruit of our own industry, and
the labour of our own poor, making a mode of the foreign gewgaw, let it be
as wild and barbarous as it will.

But I meet with an objection in my way here, which is insisted upon with
the utmost warmth; namely:--

Objection: you seem to acknowledge that the prohibition of India silks and
the duties upon French silks, have effectually answered the end as to
silks; and that the late act against the use and wearing of printed or
painted calicoes has likewise had its effect on the woollen manufacture.
There is nothing now left to support your complaint but the printed linen;
which, though it is become a general wear, yet is our own product and
growth, and the labour of our own poor; for the Scots and Irish, by whom
the linen is manufactured, are our own subjects, and ought as much to be
in our concern as any of the rest, and that linen is as much our own
manufacture