[A] Manchester Mercury, 11th November 1766.
[281] Manchester Mercury, 10th February, 14th April, 28th July.
[282] Ibid., 1st September 1767. The rules and orders of the Society of Agriculture at Manchester are given, 21st June 1774.
[283] Ibid., in various issues.
[284] Manchester Mercury, 6th September 1763.
[285] Macpherson, ibid., pp. 372-373.
[286] Ibid.
[287] Manchester Mercury, 13th September 1763.
[288] Macpherson, ibid., iii., pp. 406-407.
[289] Ibid., pp. 396-397. “This trade united all the advantages which the wisest and most philanthropic philosopher, or the most enlightened legislator, could wish to derive from commerce. It gave bread to the industrious in North America by carrying off their lumber, which must otherwise rot on their hands, and their fish, great part of which without it would be absolutely unsaleable, together with their spare produce and stock of every kind; it furnished the West India planters with those articles without which the operations of their plantations must be at a stand; and it produced a fund for employing a great number of industrious manufacturers in Great Britain; thus taking off the superfluities, providing for the necessities, and promoting the happiness of all concerned.” Cf. Bryan Edwards, History of the West Indies, Book IV., ch. iv. (1801 edition). Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies (1917), pp. 212, 256-257, 271-273, 320, 360, also the charts (pp. 244, 264), showing the balance of trade between the West Indies and England.