actice; and thus I am
brought down to the case before me.

If it should be objected that the remark is needless, that we are an
industrious and laborious people, that we are the best manufacturers in
the world, thoroughly versed in all the methods and arts for that purpose;
and that our trade is improved to the utmost in all places, and all cases
possible; if it should, I say, be thus argued, for I know some have such a
taint of our national vanity that they do talk at this rate,--

My answer is short, and direct in the negative; and I do affirm that we
are not that industrious, applying, improving people that we pretend to
be, and that we ought to be, and might be. That we are the best
manufacturers I deny; and yet at the same time I grant that we make the
best manufactures in the world; but the reason of that is greatly owing
not to our own skill exceeding others, so much as to our being furnished
from the bounty of Heaven with the best materials and best conveniencies
for the work, of any nation in the world, of which I shall take notice in
its place.

But not to dwell upon our capacities for improving in trade, I might clear
all that part without giving up the least article of my complaint; for it
is not our capacity to improve that I call in question, but our
application to the right methods; nay, I must add, that while I call upon
your diligence, and press you to application, I am supposed to grant your
capacities; otherwise I was calling upon you to no purpose, and pressing
you to do what at the same time I allowed you had no power to perform.

Without complimenting your national vanity, therefore, I am to grant you
have not only the means of improvement in your hands, but the capacity of
improving also; and on this account I must add, are the more inexcusable
if the thing is not in practice.

Indeed it is something wonderful, and not easy to be accounted for, that a
whole nation should, as if they were in a lethargic dream, shut their eyes
to the apparent advantages of their commerce; and this just now, when
their circumstances seem so evidently to stand in need of encouragement,
and that they are more than ordinarily at a kind of stop in their usual
progression of trade.

It is debated much among men of business, whether trade is at this time in
a prosperous and thriving condition, or in a languishing and declining
state; or, in a word, whether we are going backwards or forward. I shall
not meddle with th