OF PROHIBITIONS WITH RESPECT TO THE EXPORTATION OF GOLD AND SILVER.

Could Spain and Portugal have succeeded in executing their foolish laws for hedging in the cuckoo, as Locke calls it, and have kept at home all their gold and silver, those metals would by this time have been of little more value than so much lead or iron. Their plenty would have lessened their value. We see the folly of these edicts; but are not our own prohibitory and restrictive laws, that are professedly made with intention to bring a balance in our favour from our trade with foreign nations to be paid in money, and laws to prevent the necessity of exporting that money, which if they could be thoroughly executed, would make money as plenty, and of as little value; I say, are not such laws akin to those Spanish edicts; follies of the same family.

OF THE RETURNS FOR FOREIGN ARTICLES.

In fact, the produce of other countries can hardly be obtained, unless by fraud and rapine, without giving the produce of our land or our industry in exchange for them. If we have mines of gold and silver, gold and silver may then be called the produce of our land; if we have not, we can only fairly obtain those metals by giving for them the produce of our land or industry. When we have them, they are then only that produce or industry in another shape; which we may give, if the trade requires it, and our other produce will not suit, in exchange for the produce of some other country that furnishes what we have more occasion for, or more desire. When we have, to an inconvenient degree, parted with our gold and silver, our industry is stimulated afresh to procure more; that by its means we may contrive to procure the same advantages.

OF RESTRAINTS UPON COMMERCE IN TIME OF WAR.

When princes make war by prohibiting commerce, each may hurt himself as much as his enemy. Traders,

who by their business are promoting the common good of mankind, as well as farmers and fishermen, who labour for the subsistence of all, should never be interrupted or molested in their business, but enjoy the protection of all in the time of war, as well as in time of peace.

This policy, those we are pleased to call barbarians, have, in a great measure, adopted: for the trading subjects of any power, with whom the Emperor of Morocco may be at war, are not liable to capture, when within sight of his land, going or coming; and have otherwise free liberty to trade and reside in his dominions.

As a maritime power, we presume it is not thought right, that Great Britain should grant such freedom, except partially, as in the case of war with France, when tobacco is allowed to be sent thither under the sanction of passports.

EXCHANGES IN TRADE MAY BE GAINFUL TO EACH

PARTY.

In transactions of trade it is not to be supposed that, like gaming, what one party gains the other must necessarily lose. The gain to each may be equal. If A has more corn than he can consume, but wants cattle: and B has more cattle, but wants corn, exchange is gain to each: hereby the common stock of comforts in life is increased.

OF PAPER CREDIT.

It is impossible for government to circumscribe or fix the extent of paper credit, which must of course fluctuate. Government may as well pretend to lay down rules for the operations, or the confidence of every individual in the course of his trade. Any seeming temporary evil arising must naturally work its own cure.

266

ESSAYS.

HUMOROUS ACCOUNT

OF A CUSTOM AMONG THE AMERICANS, ENTITLED WHITE

WASHING.

Attributed to the Pen of Dr. Franklin.

ALTHOUGH the following article has not yet appeared in any collection of the works of this great philosopher, we are inclined to receive the general opinion, (from the plainness of the style, and the humour which characterizes it) to be the performance of Dr. Franklin.

My wish is to give you some account of the people of these new States, but I am far from being qualified for the purpose, having as yet seen little more than the cities of New York and Philadelphia. I have discovered but few national singularities among them. Their customs and manners are nearly the same with those of England, which they have long been used to copy. For, previous to the revolution, the Americans were from their infancy taught to look up to the English as patterns of perfection in all things. I have observed, however, one custom, which, for aught I know, is peculiar to this country; an account of it will serve to fill up the remainder of this sheet, and may afford you some amusement.

When a young couple are about to enter into the matrimonial state, a never failing article in the marriage-treaty is, that the lady shall have and enjoy the free and unmolested exercise of the rights of white-washing, with all its ceremonials, privileges and appurtenances. A young woman would forego the most advantageous connexion, and even disappoint the warmest wish of her heart, rather than resign the invaluable right. You would wonder what this privilege of white-washing is: I will endeavour to give you some idea of the ceremony, as I have seen it performed.

f

There is no season of the year in which the lady may not claim her privilege, if she pleases; but the

latter end of May is most generally fixed upon for the purpose. The attentive husband may judge by certain prognostics when the storm is nigh at hand. When the lady is unusually fretful, finds fault with the servants, is discontented with the children, and complains much of the filthiness of every thing about her-these are signs which ought not to be neglected; yet they are not decisive, as they sometimes come on and go off again, without producing any farther effect. But if, when the husband rises in the morning, he should observe in the yard a wheel-barrow with a quantity of lime in it, or should see certain buckets with lime dissolved in water, there is then no time to be lost; he immediately locks up the apartment or closet where his papers or his private property is kept, and putting the key in his pocket, betakes himself to flight: for a husband, however beloved, becomes a perfect nuisance during this season of female rage, his authority is superseded, his commission is suspended, and the very scullion, who cleans the brasses in the kitchen, becomes of more consideration and importance than him. He has nothing for it, but to abdicate, and run from an evil which he can neither prevent nor mollify.

The husband gone, the ceremony begins. The walls are in a few minutes stripped of their furniture; paintings, prints, and looking-glasses, lie in a huddled heap about the floors; the curtains are torn from the testers, the beds crammed into the windows; chairs and tables, bedsteads and cradles, crowd the yard; and the garden fence bends beneath the weight of carpets, blankets, cloth cloaks, old coats, and ragged breeches. Here may be seen the lumber of the kitchen, forming a dark and confused mass: for the foreground of the picture, gridirons and frying-pans, rusty shovels and broken tongs, spits and pots, and the fractured remains of rush-bottomed chairs. There a closet has disgorged its bowels, cracked tumblers, broken wine glasses, phials of forgotten physic, papers of unknown powders, seeds and dried herbs, handfuls

of cll corks, tops of teapots, and stoppers of departed decanters;-from the rag-hole in the garret to the rat hole in the celiar, no place escapes unrummaged. It would seem as if the day of general doom was come and the utensils of the house were dragged forth to judgment. In this tempest, the words of Lear naturally present themselves, and might, with some alteration, be made strictly applicable:

"Let the great gods,

That keep this dreadful pudder o'er our heads,
Find out their en'mies now. Tremble, thou wretch,
That hast within thee undivulged crimes

Unwhipt of justice!"

"Close pent-up guilt,

Raise your concealing continents, and ask
These dreadful summoners grace!"

This ceremony completed, and the house thoroughly evacuated, the next operation is to smear the walls and ceilings of every room and closet with brushes dipped in a solution of lime, called white-wash; to pour buckets of water over every floor, and to scratch all the partitions and wainscots with rough brushes wet with soap-suds, and dipped in stone-cutter's sand. The windows by no means escape the general deluge. A servant scrambles out upon the pent-house, at the risk of her neck, and with the mug in her hand, and a bucket within reach, she dashes away innumerable gallons of water against the glass panes; to the great annoyance of the passengers in the street.

I have been told that an action at law was once brought against one of these water-nymphs, by a person who had a new suit of clothes spoiled by this operation; but, after long argument, it was determined by the whole court, that the action would not lie, inasmuch as the defendant was in the exercise of a legal right, and not answerable for the consequences; and so the poor gentleman was doubly nonsuited; for he lost not only his suit of clothes, but his suit at law.

These smearings and scratchings, washings and dashings, being duly performed, the next ceremonial