 cannot fall short of a million
sterling; and, I should imagine, their trade will amount to as much more. - I
know, the linen manufacture alone returns near half a million, exclusive of the
home-consumption of that article. - If, therefore, North-Britain pays a balance
of a million annually to England, I insist upon it, that country is more
valuable to her in the way of commerce, than any colony in her possession, over
and above the other advantages which I have specified: therefore, they are no
friends, either to England or to truth, who affect to depreciate the northern
part of the united kingdom.«
    I must own, I was at first a little nettled to find myself schooled in so
many particulars. - Though I did not receive all his assertions as gospel, I was
not prepared to refute them; and I cannot help now acquiescing in his remarks so
far as to think, that the contempt for Scotland, which prevails too much on this
side the Tweed, is founded on prejudice and error. - After some recollection,
»Well, captain, (said I) you have argued stoutly for the importance of your own
country: for my part, I have such a regard for our fellow-subjects of
North-Britain, that I should be glad to see the day, when your peasants can
afford to give all their oats to their cattle, hogs, and poultry, and indulge
themselves with good wheaten loaves, instead of such poor, unpalatable, and
inflammatory diet.« Here again I brought myself into a premunire with the
disputatious Caledonian. He said, he hoped he should never see the common people
lifted out of that sphere for which they were intended by nature and the course
of things; that they might have some reason to complain of their bread, if it
were mixed, like that of Norway, with saw-dust and fish-bones; but that oatmeal
was, he apprehended, as nourishing and salutary as wheat-flour, and the Scots in
general thought it at least as savoury. - He affirmed, that a mouse, which, in
the article of self-preservation, might be supposed to act from infallible
instinct, would always prefer oats to wheat, as appeared from experience; for,
in a place where there was a parcel of each, that animal had never begun to feed
upon the latter till all the oats were consumed: for their nutritive quality, he
appealed to the hale, robust constitutions of the people who lived chiefly upon
oatmeal; and, instead of being inflammatory
