construction.) It was the understood necessity of the case that I must
passively accept my brother's statements so far as regarded their verbal
expression; and, if _I_ would extricate my poor islanders from their
troubles, it must be by some distinction or evasion lying _within_ this
expression, or not blankly contradicting it.

"How, and to what extent," my brother asked, "did I raise taxes upon
my subjects?" My first impulse was to say, that I did not tax them at
all, for I had a perfect horror of doing so; but prudence would not
allow of my saying _that_; because it was too probable he would demand
to know how, in that case, I maintained a standing army; and if I once
allowed it to be supposed that I had none, there was an end forever
to the independence of my people. Poor things! they would have been
invaded and dragooned in a month. I took some days, therefore, to
consider that point; but at last replied, that my people, being
maritime, supported themselves mainly by a herring fishery, from which
I deducted a part of the produce, and afterwards sold it for manure
to neighboring nations. This last hint I borrowed from the conversation
of a stranger who happened to dine one day at Greenhay, and mentioned
that in Devonshire, or at least on the western coast of that county,
near Ilfracombe, upon any excessive take of herrings, beyond what the
markets could absorb, the surplus was applied to the land as a valuable
dressing. It might be inferred from this account, however, that the
arts must be in a languishing state amongst a people that did not
understand the process of salting fish; and my brother observed
derisively, much to my grief, that a wretched ichthyophagous people
must make shocking soldiers, weak as water, and liable to be knocked
over like ninepins; whereas, in _his_ army, not a man ever ate
herrings, pilchards, mackerels, or, in fact, condescended to any thing
worse than surloins of beef.