What does he think of the commerce of the city of Glasgow, and of the manufactures of Paisley and all the adjacent country?
Has this anything like the deadly aspect and _facies Hippocratica_ which the false diagnostic of our state physician has given to our trade in general?
Has he not heard of the iron-works of such magnitude even in their cradle which are set up on the Carron, and which at the same time have drawn nothing from Sheffield, Birmingham, or Wolverhampton?
This might perhaps be enough to show the entire falsity of the complaint concerning the decline of our manufactures.

But every step we advance, this matter clears up more; and the false terrors of the author are dissipated, and fade away as the light appears.

"The trade and manufactures of this country (says he) going to ruin, and a diminution of our _revenue from consumption_ must attend the loss of so many seamen and artificers." Nothing more true than the general observation: nothing more false than its application to our circumstances.

Let the revenue on consumption speak for itself:-- Average of net excise, since the new duties, three years ending 1767 L4,590,734 Ditto before the new duties, three years ending 1759 3,261,694 -- ------- Average increase L1,329,040 Here is no diminution.

Here is, on the contrary, an immense increase.
This is owing, I shall be told, to the new duties, which may increase the total bulk, but at the same time may make some diminution of the produce of the old.