 conjunction with some of the leading men in Virginia and
Maryland, with whom, he said, he had already concerted measures for that
purpose.
    The company were so much alarmed at these insinuations, that they declined
complying with Mr. M--'s demands until the abbé's return; and though they
afterwards used all their endeavours to persuade him to be concerned with that
little traitor in his undertaking, (by which he might still have been a very
considerable gainer) he resisted all their solicitations, and plainly told them
in the abbé's presence, that he would never prostitute his own principles so
far, as to enter into engagements of any kind with a person of his character,
much less in a scheme that had a manifest tendency to lower the market-price of
tobacco in England.
    Thus ended a project the most extensive, simple and easy, and (as appeared
by the trial made) the best calculated to raise an immense fortune, of any that
was ever undertaken or planned by a private person; a project, in the execution
of which, M-- had the good of the public, and the glory of putting in a
flourishing condition that valuable branch of our trade, (which gives employment
to two great provinces, and above two hundred sail of ships) much more at heart
than his own private interest. It was reasonable to expect, that a man, whose
debts M-- had paid more than once, whom he had obliged in many other respects,
and whom he had carried with him, at a very considerable expence, on this
expedition, merely with a view of bettering his fortune, would have acted with
common honesty, if not with gratitude: but such was the depravity of this little
monster's heart, that on his death-bed he left a considerable fortune to mere
strangers, with whom he had little or no connexion, without the least thought of
refunding the money advanced for him by M--, in order to prevent his rotting in
jail.
    When M-- had once obtained a command of money, he, by his knowledge in
several branches of trade, as well as by the assistance of some intelligent
friends at Paris and London, found means to employ it to very good purpose; and
had he been a man of that selfish disposition, which too much prevails in the
world, he might have been, at this day, master of a very ample fortune: but his
ear was never deaf to the voice of distress, nor his beneficent heart shut
against the calamities of his fellow-creatures
