Now all these evils are without the possibility of a cure except that of importations, and to fence against ruinous folly will be always in our power in spite of the discouragements, mortifications, contempt, hatred, and oppression we can lie under. But our trade will never mend, the Navigation Act never be softened, our absentees never return, our endless foreign payments never be lessened, or our landlords ever be less exacting. All other schemes for preserving this Kingdom from utter ruin are idle and visionary, consequently drawn from wrong reasoning, and from general topics which for the same causes that they may be true in all Nations are certainly false in ours; as I have told the Public often enough, but with as little effect as what I shall say at present is likely to produce. I am weary of so many abortive projects for the advancement of trade, of so many crude proposals in letters sent me from unknown hands, of so many contradictory speculations about raising or sinking the value of gold and silver: I am not in the least sorry to hear of the great numbers going to America, though very much so for the causes that drive them from us, since the uncontrolled maxim, "That people are the riches of a Nation," is no maxim here under our circumstances. We have neither [manufactures] to employ them about, nor food to support them. If a private gentleman's income be sunk irretrievably for ever from a hundred pounds to fifty, and that he hath no other method to supply the deficiency, I desire to know, my Lord, whether such a person hath any other course to take than to sink half his expenses in every article of economy, to save himself from ruin and the gaol. Is not this more than doubly the case of Ireland, where the want of money, the irrecoverable ruin of trade, with the other evils above mentioned, and many more too well known and felt, and too numerous or invidious to relate, have been gradually sinking us for above a dozen years past, to a degree that we are at least by two thirds in a worse condition than was ever known since the Revolution? Therefore instead of dreams and projects for the advancing of trade, we have nothing left but to find out some expedient whereby we may reduce our expenses to our incomes.