Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/19

BURKE the law; not a paltry excrescence of the State; not a mean dependent, who may be neglected with little damage, and provoked with little danger. It will prove that some degree of care and caution is required in the handling of such an object; it will show that you ought not, in reason, to trifle with so large a mass of the interests and feelings of the human race. You could at no time do so without guilt; and, be assured, you will not do it long with impunity. I have in my hand two accounts: one a comparative state of the export trade of England to its Colonies as it stood in the year 1704, and as it stood in the year 1772 ; the other a state of the export trade of this country to its Colonies alone, as it stood in 1772, compared with the whole trade of England to all parts of the world, the Colonies included, in the year 1704. They are from good vouchers; the latter period from the accounts on your table, the earlier from an original manuscript of Davenant, who first established the inspector-general's office, which has been ever since his time so abundant a source of parliamentary information.

The trade to the Colonies, taken on the export side, at the beginning of this century, that is, in the year 1704, stood thus:

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