to

That the manufacture of our ftaple commodity is of very Terious importance to us, that every thing which affects it ought carefully to be watched over by the legislature, feems to have been generally understood by thofe acquainted with the politics of this country, till within these few years a difcovery has been pretended, that our forefathers were a fhort-fighted race; that the landed in tereft ought to be jealous of a commerce which had heretofore been thought to create that internal circulation fo neceffary to the profperity of the kingdom; that though the annual produce of our woollen manufactures have been (from the best accounts) from fourteen eighteen millions iterling; that though above three millions of people (in this fmall island) find employment and fubfiftence, thereby including all the various defcriptions of those that obtain a living by fupplying them with the neceflaries of life (not bringing the farmer and wool-grower into the account); I fay, notwithstanding this commerce gives such strength and opulence to the community, pays an extenfive revenue to the ftate, gives encouragement and vigour to the induftry of the hufbandman and farmer, by furnishing a market for all the produce of their land; and, laftly, though it forms fo great a part of thofe exports, without which the nation would be foon drained of its property; the landed people are now entreated to promote their own imagined intereft, at the hazard of ruining a manufacture hitherto confidered as one of our higheft and peculiar advantages. The keeping our unmas nufactured wool at home from the hands of our rivals is deemed an alarming monopoly; impracticable combinations are fuppofed to be formed among the vast and disjointed body of manufacturers to reduce the price of wool, and to encreafe their own profits by opprefling the poor; yet we are not fhewn how this is more poflible than among other traders. When the demand is finall, they must reduce the price of wages; when brifk, it is impollible from the competition in the trade to keep the wages low; and can any thing be more abfurd than calling a market, including the whole nation of Great Britain, a monopoly? and that the rivalship among fuch a multitude of

buyers, difperfed throughout the kingdom, impelled by the neceffities of three millions of people, depending upon a regular uniform fupply of wool for their employment and fubfifter.ce, can admit of a combination to lower the price of it, is incredible. Among those who are for purfuing the miftaking policies of fuffering our wool to go abroad unma nufactured, Smith ftands foremost, who publifhed his Memoirs in 1748, whom Sir John Dalrymple follows: and, lastly, Arthur Young has taken up the question, and attacked a refpectable and useful class of our countrymen with a violence of language highly indecent and undeferved; for this end he has published various communications on fpinning and the price of wool, &c. but, not ingenuous enough to procure fuch information from those who were beft able to give it him (one inftance excepted), it is collectedfrom whom? fome Partons, fome Farmers, and a Lieutenant Colonel. The difficulty of fuch people's compreheading the nature of manufactures appears by the manner in which their communications are expreffed; and I could point out various palpable errors in the accounts of earnings, the value of different wouls, &c. if the bulk of this letter would admit of it. As to urging the impolicy of compelling France to cultivate the breed of Joeep, we apprehend it to be an inconteftible tact, that even when Englifh fheep have been exported alive, the breed has foon degenerated, and that the climate will not produce the long-stapled fleece to defitable for combing.

The evidence procured to prove the alarming exportation of our wool to France being to ample and far beyond the expectations even of the manufacturers, this champion of the mittaken wool-growers, having nothing wherewith to dilprove fuch a mais of evidence, treats the examinations with ill-timed ridicule. Though an c official paper of Menf. Calonne has been brought to prove, that in the year 1782 the amount of English wool imported into France was only 13,650 fterling in value, the antwer to the difference in the quantity fince proved to have gone thither is eafy; 178 2 was during the war, when the difficulty of getting wool from our coafts, and alfo introducing it to the ports of France, was greater than at prefent; befides, it may be left with Gentlemen converiant in parliamentary bufinefs to determine on the correctnels of fuch returns as this of 1. Calonne, efpecially when it is de

firable

Lumley on the back of a door of a back room, and prefented by him to Q. Elizabeth, who directed Thomas Knevett, keeper of her house and gallery at Westminster, to put it in order with the ancestors and fucceffors," as she told Wm. Lambarde, 1601, is very curious (fee Thor Cuft. Roff. 91; Q. Eliz. Progrefits, II. N. Y. 1601, p. 41). It may deferve at least the hazarding a conjecture, that it is the identical portrait ftill exitting at Weftminster, engraved, from a drawing of Grifoni, by Vertue, for the Society of Antiquaries; from a drawing by Mr. Taiman; and fince, by Mr. Carter, in his No. XIV. Lord Lumley was, as her Majefty calls him, "a lover of antiquities;" and, as he rummaged up all the monuments of his own family, he might tumble on the portraits of her Majesty's predeceffors. D. H.

Mr. URBAN,

June 13. P AGE 397, you fpell the family name of the Bradshaighs, long refiding near Wigan, Bradshaugh."The mistake, i tuppofe, was owing to the pronunciation. I will farther rectify you, by mentioning the following information lately received from a friend intimately connected with that family: "Sir John Bradshaw, kaight, of Bradthaw, living at the time of the Conqueft: his lineal defcendant, WilItam Bradshaw, a fecond fon, in the reign of Edw. III. married Mabel, the daughter of Sir Hugh Norms, of Haigh, near Wigan; in confequence, the name was changed to Bradthaigh. The eldest bronco has been long extinct "

He further gives me this information, which I refer to your affidity to afcertan: The family of Bradthawe, from which the famous judge Bradshawe defcended, was fertied at Congleton, in Chehre, at Townfend Hall; which was pulled down, and the materials fold, in the year 1787, by John Booth of Congleton " They were an entirely different family, from a different county." Yours, &c. BENEDICT.

though he is mistaken about the chapel; inn Lane. But to the reflections of i it was not in the Strand, but in Gray's

fidelity which he throws on his character, l'cannot fubfcribe, as his behavi our confronts fuch an affertion. For, did not he read the prayers of the Church of England to his domesticks, when there was no clergyman prefent? But, had he been as loofe in religion as Mr. Hume reprefents him, he would have been more like himfelf. For is not this gentleman an advocate for Atheifm as well as Suicide? doth not he affert, that the world owes its existence to a fortuitous concourse of atoms? and doth not he fpeak of fuicide in the ludicrous way of turning a few ounces of blood out of their natural channel ? What reflections the Earl Marefchal may make on his character are not to be regarded, as they come from fo worthleis a character. For did not he attend the Spanish councils as a friend? and was not he fo bafe as to betray them to Mr. Pitt? This piece of treachery was difcovered by Mr. Pitt, when his propofal of feizing the Spanith fhips was oppofed in the cabinet, which prevented his return to Spain. What is faid about his cowardice can be refuted by a cloud of living witnefles; for, after his defeat at Culloden, when he was hunted from mountain to mountain, he difcovered no dejection of fpirits, but appeared more lively than any of his followers, and endeavoured to divert their grief by a fong, &c. if you infert this, I thall fend you a letter of the Duke of Berwick to the Duke of Fitz James, dated from Geta, August 7, 1734, which fhews a courage, when he was 14, not often met with. ANGLICUS,

PICTURESQUE DESCRIPTION OF

LEWISHAM.

HIS village is making a rapid in

THE

create of inhabitants, and confequently is improving faft in building and accommodation. Its agreeable diftance from town, to fuch as keep carriages, may be aligned as one reaton, among many others, why it is becoming a falhionable refidence for gentlemen in a respectable line of public office, or who move in an extentive circle of mercantile connection.

Its beautiful fituation in the first Kentish valley-the excellent roads which interfect it-the river Ravenfborne which haftens to the Thames at its back, and the pleasing ftream which

runs

runs clofe to the doors of the inhabitants in front, added to a fine chalybeate which offers health to the invaLid citizen, give it a diftinguished fuperiority over every other fituation at a like diftance from the metropolis. The waters which were once fuffered to ftagnate upon the greens, connected with the old roads, gave it the appearance of dampnefs of fituation, and rendered it difreputable, as fubjecting the inhabifants to agues. But fuch have been the advantages refulting from drawing off the waters by a running ftream, that an ague does not occur to the idea of the traveller, and is fcarcely known in the neighbourhood.

The foil is a fine gravel under a thin ftratum of black mould, and confequently is lets liable to a moifi atmosphere than thofe of a contrary quality. It is feen to the greatest advantage from the hills which inclofe it, especially from that which is called Vicar's Hill. The profpects which attract the eye from this enchanting pot are interefting, extentenfive, and varied with almost every object that infpire the mind with plea fure. The church, diftinguished for its beautiful neatnefs and fimplicity, is the first object which meets the eye to the right. From thence it pafles up the valley, and is relieved by the approximation of the Kent and Surrey hills embracing each other with a gentle unduJation. Upon the fummit of thete the eye ranges at large, interrupted at agreeable intervals with the chearful vil lage and afcending fpire.

Before you lies Blackheath, with its numerous noble feats and villas. At the diftance of four miles Shooter's Hill rifes abruptly. From hence we turn to the left over Woolwich and Charlton, and fix again on the charming foliage of Greenwich Park, where its Oblervarory aims with dignity towards the heaven which it unfolds. From this the eye fails on the fuperb colleges, thofe wasqualled afylums for naval indigence and naval worth. A great part of this genteel and populous neighbourhood is feen extended on the banks of the Thames-fraught with the riches of the globe-importing the luxuries of the Ealt and Weit-and bearing away to diftant words the marks of British ingenuity and British opulence. Still more diftant are the gradual eminences which form the boundaries of Laux, and affording another agreeable background to the pleating landicape.

The Royal Yard at Deptford ap

June 15.

BSERVING in the Index Indica torius of last month fome enquiry made after a perfon, once well known by the name of Vulture Hopkins, and being willing to contribute any thing in my power to the information and enter. tainment of your readers and the pub lick, how trifling foever it may be, I have made what enquiry I could about that worthy churacter, and now tranfmit you the following as the refult of my researches:

John Hopkins was a merchant in London, an Englishman, and refided in Old Broad-street, nearly oppofite to the fpot where the Excife Office now ftands; he got a vaft fortune in the famous year 1720, and was fo generally diftinguished by the appellation of Valture Hopkins, that feveral perfons, of whom, from their knowledge of the world, I fhould not have expected it, were fully perfuaded that it was his Chriftian name. He was living at the death of Sir Peter Delmé in 1728; for

at that time he conceived himself to be the richest merchant in London, and, in order to fatisfy himself upon the fubject, fent his attorney, Mr. Snell, of Laurence Pountney Hill (one of the mott refpectable men that ever graced the profettion of the law, father of the prefent William Snell, cfq. of Clap ham), to enquire of Sir Peter's executors what was the value of the property he had left behind him. Many of your readers will recolle&t Mr. Pope's farcalm upon him in his third moral epiftle," Of the Ufe of Riches;" where, clafling him with the Duke of Wharton, Colonel Charteris, Japhet Crook, &c. &c. he asks, fpeaking of riches,

What can they give? to dying Hopkins heirs? together with the hillory that is given of him in the marginal note, where he is defcribed as "a citizen, whote rapacity obtained him the name of Vulture Hopkins. He lived worthlefs, but died

worth