foreign exports, it ought to be the chief object of the public care, if we expect to be gainers in the balance of trade, which is what we hunt after in these inquiries. Thirdly, as to the lower rank of all, which we compute at 2,825,000 heads, a majority of the whole people, their principal subsistence is upon the degrees above them, and if those are rendered uneasy these must share in the calamity, but even of this inferior sort no small proportion contribute largely to excises, as labourers and out-servants, which likewise affect the common seamen, who must thereupon raise their wages or they will not have wherewithal to keep their families left at home, and the high wages of seamen is another burden upon our foreign traffic. As to the cottagers, who are about a fifth part of the whole people, some duties reach even them, as those upon malt, leather, and salt, but not much because of their slender consumption, but if the gentry, upon whose woods and gleanings they live, and who employ them in day labour, and if the manufacturers, for whom they card and spin, are overburdened with duties, they cannot afford to give them so much for their labour and handiwork, nor to yield them those other reliefs which are their principal subsistence, for want of which these miserable wretches must perish with cold and hunger. Thus we see excises either directly or indirectly fall upon the whole body of the people, but we do not take notice of these matters as receding from our former opinion. On the contrary, we still think them the most easy and equal way of taxing a nation, and perhaps it is demonstrable that if we had fallen into this method at the beginning of the war of raising the year’s expense within the year by excises, England had not been now indebted so many millions, but what was advisable under such a necessity and danger is not to be pursued in times of peace, especially in a country depending so much upon trade and manufactures. Our study now ought to be how those debts may be speedily cleared off, for which these new revenues are the funds, that trade may again move freely as it did heretofore, without such a heavy clog; but this point we shall more amply handle when we come to speak of our payments to the public. Mr. King divides the whole body of the people into two principal classes, viz.:— Increasing the wealth of the kingdom 2,675,520 heads. Decreasing the wealth of the kingdom 2,825,000 heads. By which he means that the first class of the people from land, arts, and industry maintain themselves, and add every year something to the nation’s general stock, and besides this, out of their superfluity, contribute every year so much to the maintenance of others.