There is hardly a scheme proposed for improving the trade of this kingdom, which does not manifestly show the stupidity and ignorance of the proposer, and I laugh with contempt at those weak wise heads, who proceed upon general maxims, or advise us to follow the examples of Holland and England. These empirics talk by rote, without understanding the constitution of the kingdom: as if a physician, knowing that exercise contributed much to health, should prescribe to his patient under a severe fit of the gout, to walk ten miles every morning. The directions for Ireland are very short and plain: to encourage agriculture and home consumption, and utterly discard all importations which are not absolutely necessary for health or life. And how few necessaries, conveniences, or even comforts of life, are denied us by nature, or not to be attained by labour and industry! Are those detestable extravagances of Flanders lace, English cloths made of our own wool, and other goods, Italian or Indian silks, tea, coffee, chocolate, chinaware, and that profusion of wines, by the knavery of merchants growing dearer every season, with a hundred unnecessary fopperies, better known to others than me, are these, I say, fit for us, any more than for the beggar who could not eat his veal without oranges? Is it not the highest indignity to human nature, that men should be such poltroons as to suffer the kingdom and themselves to be undone by the vanity, the folly, the pride, and wantonness of their wives, who, under their present corruptions, seem to be a kind of animal, suffered, for our sins, to be sent into the world for the destruction of families, societies, and kingdoms, and whose whole study seems directed to be as expensive as they possibly can, in every useless article of living; who, by long practice, can reconcile the most pernicious foreign drugs to their health and pleasure, provided they are but expensive, as starlings grow fat with henbane; who contract a robustness by mere practice of sloth and luxury; who can play deep several hours after midnight, sleep beyond noon, revel upon Indian poisons, and spend the revenues of a moderate family to adorn a nauseous, unwholesome, living carcase? Let those few who are not concerned in any part of this accusation, suppose it unsaid; let the rest take it among them. Gracious God, in His mercy, look down upon a nation so shamefully besotted!... Is there any mortal who can show me, under the circumstances we stand with our neighbours, under their inclinations towards us, under laws never to be repealed, under the desolation caused by absentees, under many other circumstances not to be mentioned, that this kingdom can ever be a nation of trade, or subsist by any other method than that of a reduced family, by the utmost parsimony?... II. ANSWER TO SEVERAL LETTERS SENT FROM UNKNOWN HANDS. 1729.