The East India Company have offered to pay all the duties upon tea, provided it may be sold duty free. The interest the crown has in seizures thought to be the cause why they were refused.--Never asked; because afterwards they cannot expect the execution of the laws against foreign tea.
The government of England perhaps the only one, except Holland, wherein the legislature has not force enough to execute the laws without the good-will of the people. This is an irregular kind of check upon the legislature.
Men have much oftener erred from too great respect to government than from too little.
The French sugar colonies supplied entirely with provisions from our northern colonies.
15000-20000 Hogsheads of tobacco exported to France at £20 a hogshead; at £5.
The gross produce of the English customs £3,000,000 a-year; the neat produce £1,800,000.
In all the British Leeward Islands, the muster-roll exceeded not two thousand five hundred men a few years ago, and yet there are twenty thousand blacks in Antigua alone.
The French fish on the coasts of Newfoundland in the winter, which gives them an advantage above us.
Our bustle about the Ostend company, the cause of the great progress of the French company.
The East India Company have desired to have China raw silk put upon the same footing as to duty with the Italian, but have been refused.
The reason why the court has a greater superiority among the Lords than Commons, beside the bishops, is that the court gives places to the Lords, chiefly for their interest among the Commons.
Eighteen hundred children put upon the parishes at Dublin in five years, of which, upon inquiry, there remained only twenty-eight.
Ninety-five thousand seamen computed to be in France; only sixty thousand in England.
Ships formerly lasted twenty-seven years in the English navy; now only thirteen.
Within the last two thousand years, almost all the despotic governments of the world have been improving, and the free ones degenerating; so that now they are pretty near a par.
There must be a balance in all governments; and the inconvenience of allowing a single person to have any share is, that what may be too little for a balance in one hand will be too much in another.
