I have only touched hitherto on the consequences of this blessing in relation to shipping, but it would be detrimental to all other branches of trade besides, and destructive to the poor of every country, that exports any thing of their own growth or manufacture. The goods and merchandises that every year go to the deep, that are spoiled at sea by salt water, by heat, by vermine, destroyed by fire, or lost to the merchant by other accidents, all owing to storms or tedious voyages, or else the neglect or rapacity of sailors; such goods, I say, and merchandises are a considerable part of what every year is sent abroad throughout the world, and must have employed great multitudes of poor, before they could come on board. A hundred bales of cloth that are burnt or sunk in the Mediterranean, are as beneficial to the poor in England, as if they had safely arrived at Smyrna or Aleppo, and every yard of them had been retailed on the grand Signior's dominions. The merchant may break, and by him the clothier, the dyer, the packer, and other tradesmen, the middling people, may suffer; but the poor that were set to work about them can never lose. Day-labourers commonly receive their earnings once a-week, and all the working people that were employed, either in any of the various branches of the manufacture itself, or the several land and water carriages it requires to be brought to perfection, from the sheep's back, to the vessel it was entered in, were paid, at least much the greatest part of them, before the parcel came on board. Should any of my readers draw conclusions in infinitum, from my assertions, that goods sunk or burnt are as beneficial to the poor, as if they had been well sold and put to their proper uses, I would count him a caviller and not worth answering: should it always rain and the sun never shine, the fruits of the earth would soon be rotten and destroyed; and yet it is no paradox to affirm, that, to have grass or corn, rain is as necessary as the sunshine.