This state (his own) demonstrates that the neutral nations did not _entirely engross our navigation_.
I am willing from a strain of candor to admit that this author speaks at random; that he is only slovenly and inaccurate, and not fallacious.

In matters of account, however, this want of care is not excusable; and the difference between neutral nations entirely engrossing our navigation, and being only subsidiary to a vastly augmented trade, makes a most material difference to his argument.

From that principle of fairness, though the author speaks otherwise, I am willing to suppose he means no more than that our navigation had so declined as to alarm us with the probable loss of this valuable object.

I shall however show, that his whole proposition, whatever modifications he may please to give it, is without foundation; that our navigation had not decreased; that, on the contrary, it had greatly increased in the war; that it had increased by the war; and that it was probable the same cause would continue to augment it to a still greater height; to what an height it is hard to say, had our success continued.
But first I must observe, I am much less solicitous whether his fact be true or no, than whether his principle is well established.

Cases are dead things, principles are living and productive.