strengthening a party opposite to the public interests, ever happened to be the motives in those advancements? What share of knowledge these lords had in the laws of their country, and how they came by it, so as to enable them to decide the properties of their fellow-subjects in the last resort? Whether they were always so free from avarice, partialities, or want, that a bribe, or some other sinister view, could have no place among them? Whether those holy lords I spoke of were always promoted to that rank upon account of their knowledge in religious matters, and the sanctity of their lives; had never been compliers with the times, while they were common priests; or slavish prostitute chaplains to some nobleman, whose opinions they continued servilely to follow, after they were admitted into that assembly?

He then desired to know, What arts were practised in electing those whom I called commoners: whether a stranger, with a strong purse, might not influence the vulgar voters, to choose them before their own landlord, or the most considerable gentleman in the neighbourhood? How it came to pass, that people were so violently bent upon getting into this assembly, which I allowed to be a great trouble and expense, often to the ruin of their families, without any salary or pension; because this appeared such an exalted strain of virtue and public spirit, that his majesty seemed to doubt it might possibly not be always sincere? And he desired to know, Whether such zealous gentlemen could have any views of refunding themselves for the charges and trouble they were at by sacrificing the public good to the designs of a weak and vicious prince, in conjunction with a corrupted ministry? He multiplied his questions, and sifted me thoroughly upon every part of this head, proposing numberless inquiries and objections which I think it not prudent or convenient to repeat.

Upon what I said in relation to our courts of justice, his majesty desired to be satisfied in several points; and this I was the better able to do, having been formerly almost ruined by a long suit in Chancery, which was decreed for me with costs. He asked, What time was usually spent in determining between right and wrong, and what degree of expense? Whether advocates and orators had liberty to plead in causes manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or oppressive? Whether party, in religion or politics, were observed to be of any weight in the scale of justice.? Whether those pleading orators were persons educated in the general knowledge of equity, or only in

provincial, national, and other local customs? Whether they or their judges had any part in penning those laws, which they assumed the liberty of interpreting and glossing upon at their pleasure? Whether they had ever, at different times, pleaded for and against the same cause, and cited precedents to prove contrary opinions? Whether they were a rich or a poor corporation? Whether they received any pecuniary reward for pleading, or delivering their opinions? And particularly, Whether they were ever admitted as members in the lower senate?

He fell next upon the management of our treasury; and said, he thought my memory had failed me, because I computed our taxes at about five or six millions a year, and when I came to mention the issues, he found they sometimes amounted to more than double; for the notes he had taken were very particular in this point, because he hoped, as he told me, that the knowledge of our conduct might be useful to him, and he could not be deceived in his calculations. But, if what I told him were true, he was still at a loss how a kingdom could run out of its estate, like a private person. He asked me, Who were our creditors, and where we found money to pay them? He wondered to hear me talk of such chargeable and expensive wars; that certainly we must be a quarrelsome people, or live among very bad neighbours, and that our generals must needs be richer than our kings. He asked, What business we had out of our own islands, unless upon the score of trade, or treaty, or to defend the coasts with our fleet? Above all, he was amazed to hear me talk of a mercenary standing army, in the midst of peace, and among a free people. He said, if we were governed by our own consent in the persons of our representatives, he could not imagine of whom we were afraid, or against whom we were to fight; and would hear my opinion, whether a private man's house might not better be defended by himself, his children, and family, than by half a dozen rascals, picked up at a venture in the streets for small wages, who might get a hundred times more by cutting their throats?

He laughed at my odd kind of arithmetic, as he was pleased to call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn from the several sects among us in religion and politics. He said, He knew no reason why those who entertain opinions prejudicial to the public, should be obliged to change, or should not be obliged to conceal them. And, as it was tyranny in any government

to require the first, so it was weakness not to enforce the second; for a man may be allowed to keep poisons in his closet, but not to send them about for cordials.

He observed, That among the diversions of our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming; he desired to know, at what age this entertainment was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how much of their time it employed; whether it ever went so high as to affect their fortunes; whether mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our very nobles in dependence, as well as habituate them to vile companions; wholly take them from the improvement of their minds, and force them, by the losses they received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity upon others.

He was perfectly astonished with the historical account I gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions, murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, and ambition could produce.

His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared the questions he made with the answers I had given; then, taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently, delivered himself in these words, which I shall never forget, nor the manner he spoke them in. My little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the proper ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them. I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It does not appear, from all you have said, how any one perfection is required toward the procurement of any one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct or valour, judges, for their integrity; senators, for the love of their country; or counsellors, for their wisdom. As for yourself, continued the king, who have spent the greatest part of your life in travel

ling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But, by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pains wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.

231. THE INDUSTRY OF THE BRITISH NATION.

CHENEVIX.

[THE following extract is from a posthumous work, in two volumes, entitled An Essay upon National Character,' published in 1832. There are many striking reflections in this book, which is now little read. Richard Chenevix was well known in the literary and scientific circles of his day; and was the author of two plays, which were considered a most successful imitation of the old dramatists.]

England, now the most renowned seat of industry, was not always thus active in pursuing her industrious speculations. Like every country in which early obstacles are great, she was retarded at her first outset in the career; but, like every country where those difficulties are no more than enough to awaken salutary exertions, she has finally taken a lead, and has left all her early competitors in amaze at her inexplicable progress. The other advantages which she possesses, her laws, her constitution, her Shakspere, her Newton, other nations are more apt to dispute; and, as the Grecian officers did to Themistocles after the battle of Salamis, each allows her only the second place next to itself. But in industry all are compelled to own, as did the Athenian generals to Miltiades, before the day of Marathon, that she has no rival, and to give her up the place of eminence.

Many were the nations who had the start of England in industry; and the Italians, the Germans, the Flemish, and in some respects the Dutch, were her predecessors. In very early times, indeed, she possessed neither manufactures nor commerce, although the aptitude of her mind for the mechanical arts was observed by the Romans, at the

end of the third century, to be superior to that of the Gauls. Still, however, sharpened as it was by necessity, it was not applied to general purposes even in the time of Alfred; nor does the history of her trade or manufacture present any memorable feature, except its backwardness, till long afterwards. The thirteenth century, indeed, can boast of some commercial treaties with Norway and Flanders, a considerable exportation of wool, the manufacture of some fine linens, the society of the staple, the merchants of the steelyard, &c. But these were far from being even the prognostics of the future development of British industry; for the principal business was in the hands of foreigners, and the mint was conducted by Italians. The next century witnessed much greater progress, and opened under the favourable auspices of the Charta Mercatoria, given by Edward I., granting safety to all merchants of Almaine, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, &c., who traffic with England—a measure the more expedient, because as yet the natives did not much navigate to other countries, and the produce was carried away by foreigners in foreign ships. Some English vessels did, indeed, trade to the Baltic, but none had penetrated into the Mediterranean. The condition of the shipping, too, was mean and poor, as may be learned from the navy lent by Edward I. to Philip the Fair, the largest vessels of which were manned by forty men; and in 1338 the galleys of Edward III. were built at Nice. Notwithstanding this, however, the balance in favour of Britain must have been considerable, since the exports were equal to more than seven times the value of the imports. But, unfortunately, they still consisted in raw produce, as wool, woolfells, lead, tin, &c., with the exception of some leather and some coarse cloths; for the natives did not learn how to fabricate those materials for themselves until the conclusion of this era, when manufactured articles became a little less uncommon among the goods exported. The navigation act, prohibiting all British subjects to carry merchandise, except in British ships, manned mostly by Britons, dates from 1381, and the importation of woollen cloths was forbidden in 1399.

The fifteenth century, which revealed so many important secrets to the world, could not fail to be beneficial to England, although it contained the most disastrous period of her history. Still, however, she found means to apply much attention to her woollen manufactures; and a long list of foreign wares, prohibited in 1463, shows that their fabrication