If you see _rival nations_ rejoicing at the prospect of your disunion with your provinces, and endeavouring to promote it--if they translate, publish, and applaud all the complaints of your discontented colonists, at the same time privately stimulating you to severer measures--let not that alarm or offend you. Why should it? You all mean the same thing."--(_Rules 16 and 17._) If our rulers had followed the advice of the sages of former times, instead of the theories of modern bullionists and interested parties, they would have avoided this unparalleled accumulation of disasters. Hear the greatest and wisest of men, Lord Bacon, on the subject:-- "'For the home trade I first commend to your consideration the encouragement of tillage, which will enable the kingdom to provide corn for the natives, and to spare for importation; and I myself have known more than once, when in times of dearth, in Queen Elizabeth's days, it drained much coin of the kingdom to furnish us with corn from foreign parts.' He added also-- 'Let the foundation of a profitable trade be so laid that the exportation of home commodities be more in value than the importation of foreign, so we shall be sure that the stocks of the kingdom shall yearly increase, for then the balance of trade must be returned in money.' And Lord Bacon went on to give this wholesome piece of advice:-- 'Instead of crying up all things which are either brought from beyond sea or wrought by the hands of strangers, let us advance the native commodities of our own kingdom, and employ our own countrymen before strangers.'"--_Bacon's Essays._ "Trade," says Locke, "is necessary to the production of riches, _and money to the carrying on of trade_. This is principally to be looked after, and taken care of; for if this be neglected, we shall in vain, by contrivances among ourselves, and shuffling the little money we have from one hand to another, endeavour to prevent our wants: decay of trade will quickly waste all the remainder; and then the landed man, who thinks, perhaps, by the fall of interest, to raise the value of his land, will find himself cruelly mistaken, when, the money being gone, (as it will be if our trade be not kept up,) he can get neither farmer to rent, nor purchaser to buy, his land."...