with that of the Mother Country is an advantage to the latter; since all our profits ultimately center with her. It was pointed out that the English merchants were not above sharp practices in filling orders for salt; they would reduce the amount shipped to individuals and provide the captain with all he could carry extra to be sold at high prices to needy buyers. The plaint was just another of the rumblings of discontent contributing to the grand explosion of thirteen years later. The intricacies were entered into in detail by the Committee: We have twelve different Colonies on the Continent of North America. Four of them, viz., Pennsylvania, New York, New England, and Newfoundland, have liberty to import salt from any part of Europe directly. The other eight, viz., Virginia, Maryland, East and West Jersey, North and South Carolina, Georgia and Nova Scotia, as well as all the West India Islands, are deprived of it. At present those Colonies on whose behalf the petition is given, are supplied with salt from the Isle of Mays in Africa, Sal Tortuga, and Turks Island in America, also a little from England; but are deprived of the only salt that answers best for the principal use, viz., to preserve fish and other provisions, twelve months, or a longer time. What they have from Great Britain is made from salt water by fire, which is preferred for all domestic uses. The African or American salt is made from salt water by the sun; which is used for curing and preserving provisions. The first, made by fire, is found, by long experience, in warm climates, to be too weak; the provisions cured with it turn rusty, and in six or eight months become unfit for use. The second kind, by the quantity of alum, or some other vicious quality in it, is so corrosive, that in less than twelve months, the meat cured with it is entirely deprived of all the fat, and the lean hardened, or so much consumed, as to be of little service. The same ill qualities are found in these salts with regard to fish: wherefore the arguments used, that they ought to have English salt only, are as much as to say, they should be allowed to catch fish, or salt any provisions, but let their cattle and hogs die without reaping the advantage nature has given them. In all countries where a benefit can arise by fish or provisions, salt must be cheap; and as its value where made is from ten to twenty shillings the ton, so the carriage of it to America is often more than the real value: It is in order to save part of the expense of carriage, this application is made; for although some gentlemen do not seem to know it, yet we have liberty, by the present laws in force, to carry any kind of European salt to America, the ship first coming to an English port, in order to make an entry.