"Sam": or The history of mystery./ By C. W. Webber.

332 "SAM: " OR, THE HISTORY OF MYSTERY.
trade of England, including that to the colonies, in 1704,
was ~6,509,000; the exports to the colonies alone, in 1772,
amounted to ~6,024,000.
Thus the trade with America alone is now within less than
~500,000 of being equal to what this great commercial
nation, England, carried on at the beginning of this century
with the whole world! If I had taken the largest year of
those on your table, it would rather have exceeded. But it
will be said, is not this American trade an unnatural protuberance, that has drawn the juices from the rest of the body?
The reverse; it is the very food that has nourished every
other part into its present magnitude. Our general trade
has been greatly augmented; and augmented more or less
in almost every part to which it ever extended; but with
this material difference, that of the six millions, which, in the
beginning of the century, constituted the whole mass of our
export commerce, the colony trade was but one-twelfth part;
it is now (as a part of seventeen million) considerably more
than a third of the whole.
This is the relative proportion of the importance of the
colonies at these two periods; and all reason concerning our
mode of treating them, must have this proportion as its basis,
or it is a reasoning, weak, rotten, and sophistical.
MIr. Speaker, I can not prevail upon myself to hurry over
this great consideration. It is good for us to be here. We
stand where we have an immense view of what is, and what
is past. Clouds indeed, and darkness rest upon the future.
Let us, however, before we descend from this noble eminence,
reflect that this growth of our national prosperity, has happened within the short period of the life of man-it has
happened within sixty-eight years. There are th6se alive,
whose memory might touch the two extremities! For instance,
my Lord Bathurst, might remember all the stages of the progress. He was, in 1704, of age at least be made to comprehend such things; he was then old enough, acta parentum
jam eyere, et quce sit proterit cognoscere virtus. Suppose, sir,
that the angel of this auspicious youth, foreseeing the many
virtues, which made him one of the most amiable, as he is
one of the most fortunate men of his age, had opened to him
in vision that when, in the fourth generation, the third prince
of the house of Brunswick had sat twelve years on the throne