The corporation of weavers in the woollen manufacture, who have so often attended your Grace, and called upon me with their schemes and proposals were with me on Thursday last, when he who spoke for the rest and in the name of his absent brethren, said, "It was the opinion of the whole body, that if somewhat were written at this time by an able hand to persuade the people of the Kingdom to wear their own woollen manufactures, it might be of good use to the Nation in general, and preserve many hundreds of their trade from starving." To which I answered, "That it was hard for any man of common spirit to turn his thoughts to such speculations, without discovering a resentment which people are too delicate to bear." For, I will not deny to your Grace, that I cannot reflect on the singular condition of this Country, different from all others upon the face of the Earth, without some emotion, and without often examining as I pass the streets whether those animals which come in my way with two legs and human faces, clad and erect, be of the same species with what I have seen very like them in England, as to the outward shape, but differing in their notions, natures, and intellectuals, more than any two kinds of brutes in a forest, which any men of common prudence would immediately discover, by persuading them to define what they mean by law, liberty, property, courage, reason, loyalty or religion. One thing, my Lord, I am very confident of; that if God Almighty for our sins would most justly send us a pestilence, whoever should dare to discover his grief in public for such a visitation, would certainly be censured for disaffection to the Government. For I solemnly profess, that I do not know one calamity we have undergone this many years, whereof any man whose opinions were not in fashion dared to lament without being openly charged with that imputation. And this is the harder, because although a mother when she hath corrected her child may sometimes force it to kiss the rod, yet she will never give that power to the footboy or the scullion. My Lord, there are two things for the people of this Kingdom to consider. First their present evil condition; and secondly what can be done in some degree to remedy it. I shall not enter into a particular description of our present misery; It hath been already done in several papers, and very fully in one, entitled, "A short View of the State of Ireland." It will be enough to mention the entire want of trade, the Navigation Act executed with the utmost rigour, the remission of a million every year to England, the ruinous importation of foreign luxury and vanity, the oppression of landlords, and discouragement of agriculture.