circulate through will lend it to the government. Your very export and import is a loan to the government. In short, the government shall have your money first or last, do what you will with it.

Suppose it were possible to divide this nation into two parts, the landed men and the monied men, and the government were to be put into the hands of the first against the consent of the last; and the monied men knowing the landed men could not carry on the war without money, resolved to lend them none, I mean as a government, what course should the landed men take? In my opinion, they should pass an act, that none of those people should be admitted to lend any money to the government at all. What, then, would be the consequence? They would be immediately distressed with the weight of money without improvement; they would eagerly lend it to the landed men at 4 per cent. upon their land; and they again lending it to the government at 6 and 7 per cent., the government would be supplied, and the landed men would get 3 per cent. by the other men's money.

any more than they can stop the tide at London bridge in its constant course of flux and reflux from and to the sea.

There is no doubt but the French have agents among us who would be glad to weaken our hands in the war, and prevent our supplies for that purpose. From them it must be that these notions creep into people's heads. Englishmen cannot, in their common senses, be so weak; telling us that we shall have no loans, is much at one to telling us we shall have no recruits to our army; as, while you can pay armies, you || shall never want men; so, while you can pay interest, you shall never want loans.

The estates which some men boast of, by which they are enabled to lend, and made bold enough to threaten a stop of it, were gained by lending. Those that have them are too eager to increase them, those that want them, too eager to gain them by the same method, and all too covetous and too selfish not to come into any good proposal.

The worst these men can do is, by making things appear backward, to raise the rate of interests and move the parliament to add something to the usual encouragements for lending; and if the nation pays this, who have they to blame for it? Yet, neither will they be able to do this, the present credit of the British parliament putting it out of their power, for as the necessity of lending will prompt on one hand, the undoubted security of parliamentary credit removes all the jealousies our party men would raise on the other.

I am not making application; but let any of the present parties, who boast of their having the gross of the money, reflect what they would say, if an act were to pass, that no Whig's money, or no dissenter's money, or no highchurchman's money, should be accepted upon loan; that they should not be allowed a transfer upon any stock, or to buy any annuity; the complaint would be very loud of their being excluded the common advantages of their fellow subjects, and that paying their share of taxes, The zeal some men show for their country, as they ought to have room for equal improve-well as justice to the government, is nevertheless ments, and ought not to be excluded: and this very conspicuous in this; who (first) to glorify is true too; it would be hard. Then they would their party prejudices, would have the war misrun about to their friends among the contrary carry, rather than money should be lent, while party, shelter their money under their names, such men manage as they pretend not to like: and perhaps give per cent. or 1 per cent. commis- || (secondly) reproach some people with designs to sion to others to lend, buy, and transfer for them. make peace with France, and yet endeavour, by And what would the government feel in all this? discouraging loans, to render it impossible for The case is this; no party can be so foolish them to carry on the war. to think they can be able to stop the loan of money to the government, nor need the government think of putting the laws in execution against such combination (though, if any such appeared, no doubt they might be prosecuted). Keep up but the credit of parliament, and let that parliament find funds. It is not in the power of any party of men to stop the current of loans,

But both these will be disappointed: while the parliament supports credit, and good funds support the parliament, money will come in as naturally as fire will ascend, or water flow; nor will it be in the power of our worst enemies to prevent it.

If the author of this appears again in public, it may be upon the subject of FUNDS.

AN ESSAY

ON

THE SOUTH SEA TRADE;

WITH

AN INQUIRY

INTO THE GROUNDS AND REASONS OF THE PRESENT DISLIKE AND COMPLAINT AGAINST THE SETTLEMENT

OF

A SOUTH SEA COMPANY.

BY

THE AUTHOR OF THE REVIEW.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR I. BAKER, AT THE BLACK BOY, PATERNOSTER ROW.

LONDON:

REPRINTED BY CHARLES REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET;

AND

PUBLISHED BY J CLEMENTS, AT 21 AND 22, IN THE SAME STREET.

MDCCCXLII.

A NEW trade being now to be set on foot, and in a new manner, with a capital stock, and by the encouragement of the government, it has been long expected when some able pen would have undertaken to guide the people of this unsettled age, how to think about it.

Yet, notwithstanding all this, such is the evil genius of our times, that now such an undertaking is set on foot, either it is so ill digested, or the persons ushering it into the world are thought so disagreeable or unskilful, or the thing itself so ill placed in our view, that no undertaking of the There has not been in our memory an under-kind has met with such a fate as this; and if it taking of such consequence, and so generally to be engaged in; nor has there been an undertaking about which the people, even those who are to be concerned, have been so uneasy, their opinions of it so confused, and their knowledge of the manner and circumstances of it so small.

There has not been an undertaking in this age introduced in such a method, against which so many people, upon so differing foundations, are pleased (perhaps some of them hardly knowing why) to oppose themselves. Before it was formed it had the general suffrage of all mankind, every man talked of it as a thing fit to be undertaken, worthy of the encouragement of parliament, government, Queen, and nation; the omitting it was taxed in print as a token of national blindness, and a want of judgment in the ministry or managers of all the past years of this war. The advantages the French made of it were looked upon as the great supports of the war to them, and what encouraged them to carry it on; and we were reckoned unaccountably negligent in that either we did not make those advantages ourselves, or prevent the enemy from making use of them against us.

Several public printed pamphlets, disposed to ridicule the carrying on a war in Spain, have laid down this as the main point, which the first contrivers of that war should have attempted instead of it, and have made a jest of their politics for the defect; and when the great quantities of silver which the French squadrons and private merchant ships have brought home from the South Seas have been spoken of, it has been frequently accompanied with reflections and a general regret that those happy advantages should pass by us; alleging that the English nation, who are so much better qualified every way, both by their manufactures to trade with, islands to trade from, and naval strength to manage and protect that trade, should so long lie still, and leave unattempted a trade, which in the enemy's hands is so fatal to us, and which in our hands might be so fatal to them.

must go on, it seems thronged with difficulties, calculated to destroy it in its infancy.

It is needful therefore with the utmost impartiality to inquire into the case, and see where the objections lie; for against the trade itself, quasi a trade to the South Seas, nobody will, or can, raise an objection; the objection must be founded either on

The manner,
The method,

The persons,

The time of its introduction, or against some part of the proposed scheme of carrying on this trade.

To inquire out this, to weigh duly the substance of the objections, and set the whole in a true light, that we may determine whether this trade is to be carried on, or no, is the design of this essay.

The

The act of parliament, which gives the power and limits the extent of this new trade, has given it birth and a name, but has not in the least directed in what posture the persons to be concerned shall put themselves, in what manner they shall carry it on, how they shall proceed, or where they shall begin; nor was it necessary that this should be made any part of the foundation, which principally belongs to the superstructer. power of an act of parliament was necessary to establish a company, to give them exclusive privileges, to limit and restrain these privileges, and settle bounds between them and other trades; but how this trade is to be begun, how carried on, where they shall fix their footing, from whence to go on progressively, to the end designed, this it left entirely to the dispose of the body, to whom the power and the privilege of such trade is deputed.

Now, though in the order of things we see nothing can be objected against the regularity of this proceeding, yet this seeming on one hand to leave the world in the dark, as to the manner of carrying on this trade, has on the other hand, filled us with the crude and indigested, or ill-digested notions and guesses of the town, every man giving