consequences of the tea-trade?"

Our riches would be much better employed to these purposes; but if this
project does not please, let us first resolve to save our money, and we
shall, afterwards, very easily find ways to spend it.




REPLY TO A PAPER IN THE GAZETTEER OF MAY 26, 1757 [5].


It is observed, in Le Sage's Gil Bias, that an exasperated author is not
easily pacified. I have, therefore, very little hope of making my peace
with the writer of the Eight Days' Journey; indeed so little, that I
have long deliberated, whether I should not rather sit silently down,
under his displeasure, than aggravate my misfortune, by a defence, of
which my heart forbodes the ill success. Deliberation is often useless.
I am afraid, that I have, at last, made the wrong choice, and that I
might better have resigned my cause, without a struggle, to time and
fortune, since I shall run the hazard of a new oifence, by the necessity
of asking him, why he is angry.

Distress and terrour often discover to us those faults, with which we
should never have reproached ourselves in a happy state. Yet, dejected
as I am, when I review the transaction between me and this writer, I
cannot find, that I have been deficient in reverence. When his book was
first printed, he hints, that I procured a sight of it before it was
published. How the sight of it was procured, I do not now very exactly
remember; but, if my curiosity was greater than my prudence, if I laid