It is very natural and very well for Englishmen, who have never been out of their own country, to ascribe to superiority of quality, (and inferiority of price is the same thing,) the great success they have in selling their goods in foreign countries; but such as have had an opportunity to see how it really is, know the contrary; and those who have not, may know it by observing who are the individuals in any branch of business at home that do the most, and they will find it always to be those who have the power of giving the longest credit. It is true that, in the course of time, and by struggling hard, those who have little means of extending their business at first, do it by degrees; but, until they do, they never can, in point of quantity, rival those who give long credit. [end of page #230] In the inability of other nations to give equal length of credit, consists our principal advantage; but we have seen, by the vicissitudes of ancient nations, that the wants of others, or their being behindhand, are but a very insecure tenure for the prosperity of any nation. The exportation of Britain was but inconsiderable at the beginning of last =sic= century, or about one-ninth of what it was two years ago.{187} Previous to the American war, it gradually increased to about three times what it was in the year 1700; that is, in seventy-five years. The progression was pretty regular till the year 1750, when it had risen to nearly double; but, in twenty-five years after, it increased as much as it had in fifty years before. The American war threw it back forty years, but it soon got up again to where it probably would have been, had the American war not intervened; it, however, rose beyond any thing that had ever been seen. It doubled in less than ten years; and, from this, we are led to conclude, that the taxes had not then begun to hurt national industry. But we shall see the reason, for the great increase was not owing so much to any cause inherent in this nation, as to the absolute impossibility of other nations continuing their commerce. We had got all the East and West India trade of the French and Dutch, and America had again become our greatest customer for British manufactures. Capital that could be removed was, in a manner, banished from the continent of Europe, and had taken refuge in England, and a great extent of the continent had been desolated with war. We are not, however, to expect this amazing export trade to continue; indeed, it has already fallen, in one year, as much as it ever rose in any three years; it fell fifteen millions in one year. The taxes may have operated much against our prosperity, without our knowing it, in a crisis of this sort, though they did not absolutely counteract the favourable effect produced by other causes. The commerce of the American states, which were, (like England,) out of the vortex of danger, and secure, increased in fully as rapid