It might be proved, with the greatest ease, from the nature and quality of the goods exported, as well as from the situation of the places to which our merchandise was sent, and which the war could no wise affect, that the supply of our fleets and armies could not have been the cause of this wonderful increase of trade: its cause was evident to the whole world; the ruin of the trade of France, and our possession of her colonies.

What wonderful effects this cause produced the reader will see below;[47] and he will form on that account some judgment of the author's candor or information.
Admit however that a great part of our export, though nothing is more remote from fact, was owing to the supply of our fleets and armies; was it not something ?--was it not peculiarly fortunate for a nation, that she was able from her own bosom to contribute largely to the supply of her armies militating in so many distant countries?
The author allows that France did not enjoy the same advantages.

But it is remarkable, throughout his whole book, that those circumstances which have ever been considered as great benefits, and decisive proofs of national superiority, are, when in our hands, taken either in diminution of some other apparent advantage, or even sometimes as positive misfortunes.

The optics of that politician must be of a strange conformation, who beholds everything in this distorted shape.
So far as to our trade.

With regard to our navigation, he is still more uneasy at our situation, and still more fallacious in his state of it.
In his text, he affirms it "to have been _entirely_ engrossed by the neutral nations."[48] This he asserts roundly and boldly, and without the least concern; although it cost no more than a single glance of the eye upon his own margin to see the full refutation of this assertion.
His own account proves against him, that, in the year 1761, the British shipping amounted to 527,557 tons,--the foreign to no more than 180,102.
The medium of his six years British, 2,449,555 tons,--foreign only 906,690.