she does not love, and who do not deserve such advantages, because I suppose-because they are not of her party. Present my respects to your good landlord and his family. I honor them for their conscientious aversion to illicit trading. There are those in the world, who would not wrong a neighbour, but make no scruple of cheating the King. The reverse, however, does not hold; for whoever scruples cheating the King, will certainly not wrong his neighbour. You ought not to wish yourself an enthusiast. They have, indeed, their imaginary satisfactions and pleasures, but these are often balanced by imaginary pains and mortification. You can continue to be a good girl, and thereby lay a solid foundation for expected future happiness, without the enthusiasm that may perhaps be necessary to some others. As those beings, who have a good sensible instinct, have no need of reason, so those, who have reason to regulate their actions, have no occasion for enthusiasm. However, there are certain circumstances in life, sometimes, where it is perhaps best not to hearken to reason. For instance; possibly, if the truth were known, I have reason to be jealous of this same insinuating, handsome young physician; but, as it flatters more my vanity, and therefore gives me more pleasure, to suppose you were in spirits on account of my safe return, I shall turn a deaf ear to reason in this case, as I have done with success in twenty others. But I am sure you will always give me reason enough to continue ever your affectionate friend. To Cadwalla der Evans, dated Lon By a ship just sailed from hence, (the captain a stranger, whose name I have forgotten,) don, 7 Sept., I send you a late French treatise on the management of silkworms. It is said to be the 1769. best hitherto published, being written in the silk country by a gentleman well acquainted with the whole affair. It seems to me to be, like many other French writings, rather too much drawn out in words; but some extracts from it, of the principal directions, might be of use, if you would translate and publish them. I think the bounty is offered for silk from all the colonies in general. I will send you the act. But I believe it must be wound from the cocoons, and sent over in skeins. The cocoons would spoil on the passage, by the dead worm corrupting and staining the silk. A public filature should be set up for winding them there; or every family should learn to wind their own. In Italy they are all brought to market, from the neighbouring country, and bought up by those that keep the filatures. In Sicily each family winds its own silk, for the sake of having the remains to card and spin for family use. If some provision were made by the Assembly for promoting the growth of mulberry trees in all parts of the province, the culture of silk might afterwards follow easily. For the great discouragement to breeding worms at first is the difficulty of getting leaves and the being obliged to go far for them. There is no doubt with me but that it might succeed in our country. It is the happiest of all inventions for clothing. Wool uses a good deal of land to produce it, which, if employed in raising corn, would afford much more subsistence for man, than the mutton amounts to. Flax and hemp require good land, impoverish it, and at the same time permit it to produce no food at all. But mulberry trees may be planted in hedgerows on walks or avenues, or for shade near a house, where nothing else is wanted to grow. The food for the worms, which produce the silk, is in the air, and the ground under the trees may still produce grass, or some other vegetable good for man or beast. Then the wear of silken garments continues so much longer, from the strength. of the materials, 'as to give it greatly the preference. Hence it is that the most populous of all countries, China, clothes its inhabitants with silk, while it feeds them plentifully, and has besides a vast quantity both raw and manufactured to spare for exportation. Raw silk here, in skeins well wound, sells from twenty to twenty-five shillings per pound; but, if badly wound, is not worth five shillings. Well wound is, when the threads are made to cross each other every way in the skein, and only touch where they cross. Badly wound is, when they are laid parallel to each other; for so they are glued together, break in unwinding them, and take a vast deal of time more than the other, by losing the end every time the thread breaks. When once you can raise plenty of silk, you may have manufactures enough from hence. To Miss Mary dated Craven 1770. Your good mother has complained more of her head since you left us than ever before. St., 22 Jan., If she stoops, or looks, or bends her neck downwards, on any occasion, it is with great pain and difficulty, that she gets her head up again. She has, therefore, borrowed a breast and neck collar of Mrs. Wilkes, such as misses wear, and now uses it to keep her head up. Mr. Strahan has invited us all to dine there tomorrow, but she has excused herself. Will you come, and go with me? If you cannot well do that, you will at least be with us on Friday. As to my own head, which you so kindly inquire after, its swimming has gradually worn off, and to-day for the first time I felt nothing of it on getting out of bed. But, as this speedy recovery is, as I am fully persuaded, owing to the extreme abstemiousness I have observed for some days past at home, I am not without apprehensions, that, being to dine abroad this day, to-morrow, and next day, I may inadvertently bring it on again, if I do not think of my little monitor and guardian angel, and make use of the proper and very pertinent clause she proposes, in my grace. comes a morning visitor. Adieu. To a friend in America, dated London, 18 1770. Here Your very judicious letter of November 26th, being communicated by me to some March, member of Parliament, was handed about among them, so that it was some time before I got it again into my hands. It had due weight with several, and was of considerable use. You will see that I printed it at length in the London Chronicle, with the merchants' letter. When the American affairs came to be debated in the House of Commons, the majority, notwithstanding all the weight of ministerial influence, was only sixty-two for continuing the whole last act; and would not have been so large, nay, I think the repeal would have been carried, but that the ministry were persuaded by Governor Bernard, and some lying letters said to be from Boston, that' the associations not to import were all breaking to pieces, that America was in the greatest distress for want of the goods, that we could not possibly subsist any longer without them, and must of course submit to any terms Par liament should think fit to impose upon us. This, with the idle notion of the dignity and sovereignty of Parliament, which they are so fond of, and imagine will be endangered by any further concessions, prevailed, I know, with many, to vote with the ministry, who, otherwise, on account of the commerce, wish to see the difference accommodated.* The following extract is from a letter written by Mr. Johnson, agent from Connecticut, to Governor Trumbull, dated London, March 6th, 1770: 'At length the American revenue act has been debated in the House of Commons. Lord North moved, yesterday, for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the duty upon the three articles only, which he grounded upon the promise made by the administration in their circular letter to propose it to Parliament, and upon the anti-commercial nature of these duties. The conduct of America, he said, had been such as, in his opinion, to prevent their going farther, by their refusing to be content with this, by their entering into and continuing their combinations against the trade of this country, which he called insolent, unwarrantable, and illegal, and such as Parliament must not yield to, nor could, without giving up all authority over the colonies. He insisted, that the preamble to the act, and the duty on tea, must be retained, as a mark of the supremacy of Parliament, and an efficient declaration of their right to govern the colonies. He said it was also an operative duty, and fairly within our old distinction between internal and external taxes, the latter of which we had admitted they might impose. This was a port duty, not an internal tax."-S. In the same letter Mr. Johnson adds, that Lord Chatham had said in debate three nights before: "I have been thought to be, perhaps, too much the friend of America. I own I am a friend to that country. I love the Americans because they love liberty, and I love them for the noble efforts they made in the last war. But I must own I find fault with them in many things; I think they carry matters too far; they have been wrong in many respects. I think the idea of drawing money from them by taxes was ill judged. Trade is your object with them, and they should be encouraged. But, (I wish every sensible American, both here and in that country, heard what I say,) if they carry their notions of liberty too far, as I fear they do, if they will not be subject to the laws of this country, especially, if they would disengage themselves from the laws of trade and navigation, of which I see too many symptoms, as much of an American as I am, they have not a more determined opposer than they will find in me. They must be subordinate. In all laws relating to trade and navigation especially, this is the mother country, they are the children; they must obey, and we prescribe. It is necessary; for in these cases between two countries so circumstanced as these two are, there must be something more than connexion, there must be subordination, there must be obedience, there must be dependence. And, if you do not make laws for them, let me tell you, my Lords, they do, they will, they must make laws for you."-S. |