AVON A; OR A TRANSIENT VIEW Of the Benefit of making RIVERS Of this Kingdom NAVIGABLE.  
OCCASIONED By observing the Situation of the City of SALISBURY, upon the AVON, and the Consequence of opening that River to that City.  
Communicated by Letter to a Friend at LONDON.  
By R. S.  Sola est fiducia Nilo. 
LONDON, Printed by T. R. & N. T. for John Courtney Bookseller in Sarum, 1675.   

A Transient view of the benefit of making the Avon by Salisbury, and other Rivers of this Kingdom Navigable.  
Communicated by Letter to his Friend at London.  
SIR,  
TO maintain that Correspondence (of so very great satisfaction and advantage on my part) begun betwixt us, I shall give you an account of something I met with in my way homewards from your great City, having nothing else ready at present; But by the next, I shall entertain you with some not inconsiderable observations made about these parts, and some very useful experiments, now almost perfected.  
I am sure you remember, that the Inhabitants of Salisbury obtained an Act for making their River Navigable; but, as if that had been enough, they have hitherto spent all their first vigour in discourse; But now, at my return, as if they meant to proceed effectually, they talk of nothing, but of procuring subscriptions for raising Money; of agreeing with some able Person to undertake the work; And the Mayor and Commonalty of the City, have taken forth a Commission under the Broad Seal, to empower them to go on with it: So that if they could not agree, 'tis probable some short time may give beginning to the work; which, because I have some affection for, I shall give you my thoughts of.  
The Avon (you must know, having its Spring in the North-parts of Wiltshire, holds on a course from North to South, of about Twenty Miles, by Vp-Avon, Enford, Amesbury, and by Stratford under the Old Sorbiodunum, to New Salisbury, upon its approach to which City, divers small Channels are derived from it; by which, part of it is conveyed through most of the Streets: The residue, in a large Bed, passes on the Westside of the Town; and having run the whole length of the City and Close, it receives at the South-West Angle of the Close, the Wily, and the Nadder: The former of which, rising about Warminster, and passing by Heytsbury, and receiving several Rills by the way, meets with the Nadder about Wilton; and from thence, they both pass towards Salisbury, and join with the Avon at the place before named.  
The Avon increased by these two Rivers, (either of them near Twenty Miles distant from their first Springs, before this their last confluence) runs under Harnham Bridge, (which is that we pass over in our way to the City from the Western-parts) and within two or three Furlongs, receives another not inconsiderable River, from the North-East, at a place called Muttons Bridge; (betwixt which two Bridges, all those several Rills which the City had borrowed out of the Avon, are returned again into its Channel) with the access of which, and several others in its course afterwards by Downton, Forthingbridge, and Ringwood in the New-Forrest, it runs on to Christ-Church (about Twenty Mile from Salise) and there discharges itself into the Sea.  
Whoever shall consider the largeness of the River here at this place, and the continual increase of it in its passage to the Sea, will rather wonder, (as I have often done) that no benefit has been hitherto made of it, than any ways doubt, that it is able to answer the greatest they can reasonably expect from it: it reflecting very much upon the Inhabitants of this place, That when Nature had so opportunely provided a sufficiency of Waters, They should be so much wanting to themselves, as not to afford those Waters a convenient Channel.  
But, what you and I talked of the other day, of the several Genius's of Ages, may have place here: And therefore, without being too severe to the discretion of this particular place, we shall be contented to charge this long oversight, upon the Genius of the foregoing Ages; which, its evident, was not so quick and active in apprehending the means of improving what lay before them, as the present is: as is daily seen, not only in the great advancements of Art, and useful knowledge; in the improving of our Lands, etc. but in the same kind too: As appears by the many Acts lately passed for making several of our Rivers Navigable; divers of which are since prosecuted to effect; A searching, thriving Genius; reserved for this present Age to wait on, and perfect that Felicity which the past Calamities, it has safely emerged out of, will make it at last seem worthy of, and set off with a greater Lustre: if our own supiness, in not laying hold on those opportunities it offers, suffer it not to escape us; since the particular Genius of every Age, (moving on upon the same Wheel that time does) being once passed, is as irrevocable as that time that presented it; both of them as they enter, so passing off together. And this is it may possibly awake the Inhabitants of this place, to endeavour to make a further use of the opportunity of their Situation, and not to sit down any longer contented with that little contrivance, which pleased their Ancestors so very much, of cutting those Channels I mentioned but now, and making but this only use of the Avon, To keep their Streets clean. But to endeavour to improve it to those nobler advantages, which the bounty of the River will most certainly afford 'em.  
For, to doubt of such advantages to be made by making such Rivers as this is, Navigable, (as at my being here, some Gentlemen living thereabout in the Hill-Countrey (as they call it) did) is but a piece of stupidity as is not worth a refuting; it being all one, as to question whether Navigation be advantageous or no? Therefore, as when things evident from sense and experience are denied, we supersede arguments, and bid our adversaries only to make use of their senses, and confute themselves: So here, let any one who thinks otherwise, but only look about him, and observe the vast disproportion between the wealth of such places (otherwise equal) which are open to drive a Trade by Sea, and those which are bound up within the Land, or, which is all one, the difference betwixt the Estate of a Tradesman and of a Merchant.  
But there is more advantage to those places, which being seated far within the Land (as this is) do enjoy the benefit of Commerce by Sea, by some Navigable River, then to those Port-Towns which are seated in some Creek or Bay only, and are (as I may call it) Land-locked, having no passage up into the Land but by Carriages; as we see in Poole and Lynn, in Dorset, and in a number of other Port-Towns of like Situation in other parts quite round the Island: For such places, though the Sea brings in commodities to them, yet they can neither without great charge convey those commodities higher up into the Land, nor, without the like charge, receive the Inn-land commodities to export again: Whereas, Cities seated upon Navigable Rivers far within the Land, look like some Noble Exchange of Natures own designing; where the Native and the Foreigner may immediately meet, and put off to each other the particular commodities of the growth of their own Countries; the Native (as a Merchant) receiving the Foreign Goods at the first hand, and exchanging his own for them at the very place where they are made, or grow; or at most, going no further to it, then to his ordinary Market.  
And, as there is more of profit in such a Situation, so there is of Health and Pleasantness; for we know, That Scurvies, quartans, and other lingering Diseases, are more frequent near the Sea, then higher within the Land, where the Air coming to us from the Neighbouring Plains, Fields, and Woods, is more sprightly and stirring, and brings along with it the peculiar Health and Amenities of those places it came from: Whereas, the Inhabitants nigh the Sea must be content to take (as we use to say) one with tother; And, as they enjoy the benefits which flow in upon 'em thence, so must they abide its inconveniencies too: But in such Situations as this, all the advantages of the Sea are fully and equally enjoyed with those places seated nigh it, and only the injuries left out. And (if there be any thing in so slight a Remark) the Situation of those places far within the Land upon some River, or in draught of the Sea, seems to carry more of State; when the Inhabitants, being removed at a distance, (as in London, Antwerp,) and the wealth of the Sea waits on 'em at home, then when they go forth and attend it on the Shoar.  
But it is not so much the pleasure, or Healthiness of a place that usually takes the Common Inhabitant, much less its Situation in point of Honour (as we may call it) as the profit and advantage he shall find in it. And this, as the Inhabitants of Salisbury in particular may assure themselves of, so may you and I, and the whole Kingdom, look upon this, and all other of like Nature, as upon works of a National and Public Emolument: for when so many considerable places shall be enabled to look out toward a Trade at Sea, our strength in Shipping and Mariners will be increased; Numbers of Lazy and Idle Persons set on work; And that Royal Trade of Fishing, of so vast concernment to these Kingdoms, for which His Majesty has laid such excellent Foundations, will be very much advanced from the Number and Quality of Persons in and nigh those places. (and all almost such Rivers in their course to the Sea) who, from the opportunity of their Situation, will see themselves so much concerned, for their own benefit, to pursue those public ends, which are inseparably woven their private ones.  
And here, give me leave to take a view, as they who having gained the top of some Mountain do, of a fair, but distant Landschap towards which they are Travelling; whose extremities, though they appear faint, shady, and confused; And the particular objects seem broken; undistinguished, and blended together; yet the vastness of them is not the less considerable from that Indistinction, (it being rather an access and reputation to Greatness, than any diminution to render it indesinite) of the future Glory, which the effecting the present design of making our Rivers Navigable, will undoubtedly advance this Kingdom too: I would not have you think me too confident in saying thus; for all the past and present experience of the whole World, will bear witness, of what infallible consequence Navigation is to Opulence, Greatness, and Empire: And that, as those People who Trade by Sea, shall always more abound in Wealth then the Inn-landers, so if a contest happen between two such People, the Maritime People shall always be of greater ability to maintain the Ware-And (the virtue of the People, and of their Chiefs, being otherwise equal) shall in fine prevail.  
Look back then upon the Phaenicians, elder than Storv, (for they flourished in the Fabulous Age) and you will find 'em great in themselves, and greater in their Descendants and Colonies; powerful even to a Proverb; the extent of the Tyria Maria, being as vast, as the bounds of the then known Sea; To all which, the dread of their Power gave Law and Name: And that one City Tyre, sustaining the whole force of the Chaldaean Monarchy for thirteen years▪ when in its oppugnation by Nabuchadnezzar. Every Head was made Bald, and every shoulder was Peeled: (by carrying those Materials which filling up the Seas that divided the Island on which Tyre stood, from the Continent, enabled him to make his approaches by Land) abounding in all the plenty the Neighbouring Regions and Islands could afford 'em; in exchange for their famed Tyrian Purple: whilst in the mean time, the Mountainers, and Hill-Country Gentlemen of Syria (like their Posterity the present Wild Arabs) were forced to live upon the dry revenue of a barren desert; their expeditions being chief undertaken against the next Neighbouring Flocks and Herds; and instead of clothing themselves in Vests of Silk, and Purple; acknowledged themselves, in this only, obliged to the Indulgence of their Clime, which affording them Sun enough, might excuse 'em from wearing any.  
Look next upon the Issue of the contest betwixt those two famous Cities, Athens and Sparta, in the Peloponnesian War; when, the Spartans', who lived upon the revenue of their Lands, those Lands being wasted, were utterly disabled any longer to maintain the War; nor could they, by all those difficult habits of Sufferance and Frugality, buy up their Fortunes; But to the till then unknown dishonour of the Spartan Name, which upon the strength of a peculiar Discipline, had boar itself up for four hundred years, were enforced to sue for an unworthy Peace: Whereas the Athenians, their Territories being in like manner wasted by the Spartans', and their City blocked up towards the Land, lived, during that restraint, in all plenty; and recovering themselves by their Trade at Sea, carried over the War to the Spartans' Dominions, and prevailed over them in despite of virtue.  
The same is evident from the different abilities of the Romans and Carthaginians in the second punic War; for, though the Carthaginians had bought the first Peace of the Romans for two Thousand two Hundred Talents, to be paid in Twenty years; of which, a proportionable quantity was paid before the breaking out of the Second War; And though, in the same interval, the Romans unjustly extorted other Twelve Hundred Talents (upon pretence, that some preparations which the Carthaginians made for the recovery of Sardinia, were intended against Rome) and consequently, at the beginning of the Second War, the Romans were as much richer than the Carthaginians, as the access of those Sums could make 'em; And the Carthaginians (besides the loss of those Sums, being also in that interval, exhausted by a dangerous War against their Mercenaries) were so much poorer than otherwise they would have been; yet in that Second War, the speedy growth of the Carthaginian Wealth by their Sea-Trade, sufficiently appears; When Hannibal, carrying over the War into Italy, brought it before the Gates of Rome; and when, had the virtue of the Carthaginians been equal to that of the Romans, or of their own General, affording him those necessary supplies which were in their power to have yielded; Rome had been inevitably lost; and the Senate waited upon Hannibal's Triumph: When contrariwise, the Romans, whose Revenue came from the Fruits of their Ground, were reduced by that War, to such extreme want, that they were not able to redeem their Prisoners taken at Cannae, though at that time they were in so great want of Men, that they were enforced to enrol their (Praetentati) Boys in their Legions; and to borrow Eight Thousand Slaves of their Masters, to be paid for when the War was ended. This, Cato well observed in his usual Close, Deleatur Carthago! And the Senate fulfilled in their Decree, to remove Carthage higher up into the Land; for, it was not Carthage that the Romans dreaded, but its Navigation; which had twice raised that City, greater out of its ruins; and would at length have given the Empire of the World to Carthage, and made Rome Tributary, had not its Twelve-miles removal from the Sea, founded an Inland-Carthage, which could no more be dreaded. And conform to this, you cannot but have observed, That the constant custom of a prevailing power over its Emulous Adversary, is, To reduce the number of its Vessels.  
I need not name Venice to you; Their own Proverb will tell you what made 'em Rich (Ill bianno & il nero (cive Pope & cottone) vanno futto Venetia ricca) White and Black (viit Pepper & Cottin, those inconsiderable small Wares) have made Venice Rich: And you may then tell yourself what made 'em potent.  
The most admirable instance of this, are the Hollanders; by whose Navigation it came to pass (says Grotius) ut Batavorum inter arma foelicit●●, non alicnam m●do pacem, sed & suam vinceret. That the felicity of the Netherlanders in the midst of War, did not only exceed that of the Peace of others, but of their own.  
But you will ask me, To what purpose is all this, since every body sufficiently knows it? I confess, the truth is so evident, that I ought to ask Pardon for telling you over what all the World acknowledges; But you will certainly excuse me, when you shall consider, That notwithstanding this confessed evidence, yet most Men know it to no purpose, refusing to guide themselves by that knowledge: Either out of a dull heavy temper, which restrains 'em within the ancient narrow Bounds which their Forefathers have cast up about 'em; as if they knew and did all that was ever possible to be performed; (which is the Common Error of the Vulgar) and that to advance any further, and to pass over those Bounds, were a Trespass, and a true Transgression: Or out of a ridiculous Pride, (the error of many of a better rank) which the wiser of our own, and other Nations justly deride us for, accounting it beneath a Gentleman, to employ himself about any other thing, but the contriving how to pass away his time the most vainly and unprofitably he can; running counter thus to all the wiser parts of Mankind; who, truly sensible of the brevity of Life, and the long achievements of Knowledge and Art, did from those very reflections, quicken and excite their industry; and by a generous impatient ardour, made that very infelicity a step to virtue; by husbanding that inestimable, but wasting treasure of time, to the utmost advantage: Whereas we, on the contrary, not knowing how to employ our time, find it to be tedious to us; and complain of the length of those hours, which all the knowing World lament for their Brevity, and accuse only of too much Wing: And therefore, finding our time to lie upon our hands, and to press us as a heavy Burden, we study only how to spend it: And to this purpose, (and not for Diversion, after some more than ordinary intentions of the Mind, but as our sole business, worthy to take up all the Man, and the whole grand affair of Life, we pursue follies; and add to the already too speedy course of our Hours, a more momentary flight by those swifter vanities; which upon that account, we celebrate for the most excellent Pastimes; as having by them, attained the utmost End of all our endeavours and deep contrivances. To have yet further shortened and reduced our Span; and made our Age more nothing then it was, by passing its time away most insensibly and to no purpose: As if a worthy employment, either in any ingenuous (though Manual) labour by which Art might be advanced, which the greatest Monarch of the Earth, the Grand Signior refuses not; Or the promoting such public works as these, for the good and honour of our Country; or the vouchsafing to descend to reap the benesits accrueing by them, by Traffic and Commerce; which the Princes of Italy themselves, disdain not; but think the so employing their Vessels, to be altogether as well as to Fight with them; (and by which means the Italian Gentry do (at least) preserve their ancient Patrimony) were not far more generous, then either to be Idle, or to become Slaves to our Vices, in doing the dull sensual Labours of Intemperance; and so commit the charge of all other business to our Servants, and reserve to ourselves only, the greater trouble of our own undoing.  
Whether it be any of these, or whatever else it is that thus emasculates and befools us, It will not be thought impertinent, by remembering the Bravery of the Tyrian, the ancient Spartan and Athenian Fate and Glory; Carthage even near conquered, The fear of Rome; The noble Duration and Grandieur of Venice; And the Opulency of the Hoghan Moghans', to endeavour to awake us to the laying hold on those Opportunities which are before us; viz. The easy work of making all our Rivers, capable of it, Navigable; which when we shall have finished, and given our Island more Shoar then Nature has afforded it, (the Sea, not only as now compassing, but entering us) That safety from without, which our most advantageous Situation already gives us, of being of difficult approach to its Enemy, and of easy descent for the Native, will be far more assured by the vast increase of our Shipping; which surrounding this our Island by their Wooden Walls, will afford it a protection greater than its own; A safety beyond what the Oracle promised Athens; and will be, and confer, that Glorious Impress which encloses His Majesty's Coins, (and may it always His Sceptre!) Deus & Tutamen.  
Our safety from within too will be more assured: For People too numerous for the place that bred 'em, become, through want of employment, Poor, and consequently discontented, restless, and unquiet; As Spirits in depauperated Liquors, grow iejune, and acid, exalting the terrene faculent parts: But as those Spirits, by the affusion of some more generous Body, grow more benign, sedate, and temperate; so the Poor and Idle, being put upon a full employment, their Melancholy eager Spirits will convert all their powers on that; and be saded with the bounty of that employment; and the wealth that will wait on it: Which mutually advancing each other, the employment first begetting wealth, and then that wealth a greater employment, shall establish (what Art could never yet find out, nor Nature in particulars did ever yet perpetuate) a constantmotion, excited by itself, and by itself continued and advanced: Which inceslantly moving on, and like a glorious Torrent, gathering New force and vigour from its progress, shall raise up a power and Felicity, indeterminate, and boundless as the Causes which built it up; so far exceeding any of theirs we have before named, as the diversions of our Island, enlarged by those vaster Shores which our industry shall lay open, are, to the single Haven of one City, Tyre or Carthage; Athens or Venice; Or to the narrow Shores of a Province or two: So that we shall no more need to reckon up the Examples of others, when we ourselves shall be the Greatest; nor to remember their Felicities, but to attend our own; and that Opulence, Grandieur Empire which will undoubtedly follow it.  
And having thus gained to ourselves Safety and Plenty; and a Power able to assure them to us, and be the warranty of those Blessings, we may then have leisure to attend those further noble Superstructures, which so firm and safe Foundations will assuredly sustain.  
Knowledge will be advanced; for when ourselves shall have more fulfilled that leading part of the Prophecy, Multi pertransibunt, That infallible Oracle which gave it forth, will complete the following one, Augebitur Scientia. For when the whole Book of Nature shall be laid open, and the Story of her written over all the Face of the Earth, be made more legible, That Truth, which the World has in vain hitherto attempted, and sought out of the dark Cells of Contemplative Philosophers, (in which Pits she has been hitherto buried) will then emerge, and manifest itself, when the Conceptions we imagine, and frame in ourselves, of those umbratile Schematismes, those very ways, and viewless paths, which Nature signs and moves in, shall follow and be agreeable to the same real Truths of those her ways in things, which our long, and most accurate Observation and Experience, shall first discover in those things, scattered throughout the whole extent of her Dominion; and not, when we shall first make Worlds of our own, and giving New Fanatic Laws to motion, shall endeavour to make Nature obedient to Scheme; and obtruding it with the greatest earnestness and Pride imaginable upon others, shall permit none else to 'em in quiet; but shall arrogate to ourselves the sole authority of being perpetnal Dictator's both to Men and Nature. And then, those Noble Persons, whom the inadverting part of the World vainly censures, for their so carefully treasuring up, the many little (as such esteem them) and mean Occurrences of Nature (as if there were any thing in the design or conduct of her Actions, mean; and but of small regard; and that the most obvious; every-days wonders, did not discover a Wisdom, high, and removed, to the utter dishonour and confusion of ours; and to the astonishment and highest veneration of all persons, but only of the unwise Man who doth not well consider it; and of the Fool, who will never understand it) shall receive the full, though late honour due to their Merit; when Posterity, by disposing together those scattered Leaves of Nature's Oracles, gathered up by the diligent Observers over all parts of the World, and deposited with those Candidates of Wisdom, shall have established those great and general Truths, which all those dispersed particulars shall consent in, and bear witness to; And, as with fit materials, shall have erected that August Temple of Science; but slowly, and by degrees, as is the procedure of Nature in her own Operations, when she designs any thing firm, glorious, and permanent.  
And, as Knowledge, so will be Arts further advanced; not only by importing those of the product of other Countries, (a Negotiation not so much heeded, as perhaps were fitting) but the active part among us, will be encouraged to confer new Donatives on the World; which they may as yet attempt with some unwillingness: For, since those (properly) Mechanic Arts, which with greater Power, Speed, and Felicity, perform the Operations of many, by making use of other Aids than the immediate Hands of Men, may receive yet further advancement; but being advanced, since those Multitudes of Hands, with which we already too much abound, will be then un-employed, whose helps are now requisite; Those noble Inventors, whose sole End is the good of Mankind, imagine they should▪ fail of that great End, when by purchasing to themselves, the honour due to inventing and cultivating such helps, they shall defraud the necessitous; whose necessary subsistence depending upon their immediate Labour, to excuse their Labour, were to take away their Bread: Whereas, when our many Hands shall be otherwise employed, all helps will be acceptable; and the inventors of them receive their due Honours, not blasted with the Curses of the Indigent.  
I know you will be apt to smile at this, as a Fancy only; But let me ask you, how many Thousand Pens are excused since the Art of Printing was invented, and our Libraries are no longer Manuscripts? Which therefore must necessarily press in for a Livelihood among other Arts, and overtook those Professions. How many poor Families would starve, if the invention of Sawing Mills were not (as out of Charity) suspended? But to go no further for an instance than this very Salisbury; Some few years part, the mode of drawing Wire, otherwise then by the Hand was brought into that City, by some from London; How did the poor Men of that Profession (the Common Wyer-Drawers) suffer by that Intrusion? Who, as Men whose Country some potent Enemy had possessed, being cast out of their Employment, were enforced to seek out New Labours, or starve upon their Old, not being able to work to their Masters so cheap as the Engine could: Which process, how obvious was it to have been found out sooner? Or, for want of invention, how easily might it have been had from the famous Mersennus? who reported it as the practice of his Country many years ago?  
And the same will at all times fall out, when the unassisted Arms of Men shall contend with the force of Engine; which latter therefore being preferred, shall exclude the former; and the Invention, though worthy of all Honour, yet unhappily approved to use, shall become a Grievance; and engrossing all Employment into some Engines Dead Hand, must awake the Laws in defence of the oppressed to wrest it out thence, and arm itself anew against that second Mortmain.  
But (having first made way for the innocent use of such Aids, and when to those Aids, we shall add our own diligence (as some other Nations do) we shall not be obliged to envy the Industrious; but managing our Labours with as few Hands as any, and as great a diligence, shall have no cause to complain that others can afford the proceeds of their Labours at a cheaper rate than we, and under-sell ours, to the impairing and discouragement of Trade; but shall find, that ours will yield us as full returns as theirs, whenever we shall bring as sufficient Aids as they, and an equal industry.  
What remains to be achieved, (if what went before were not abundantly so too) will be Honour and Glory: For when Navigable Rivers shall be the Bounds of Villas; and of those the Ocean; and of it, the utmost extent of Nature; The opportunity of those Situations will excite the more Generous among us to invade those its furthest Borders; and in particular, that forlorn Company of Supernumeraries, who by a kind of Fatality are become a Proverb to the World, and ranked among the other indigent Grandees of our Neighbour Nations (the Dons of Spain, the Minsieurs of France, and the Barons of Germany, the younger Brothers of England, if they bring a virtue equal to their Poverty (and their Parents may do well to train 'em up eminently to the First, since they endow them sufficiently with the latter) will have a large Scheme open to exercise that virtue in; by discovering, and planting those many yet unknown, and uncultivated Regions of the World; (for we are yet Strangers to those vast Southern Tracts, nor do we know the amplitude of those Continents whose Shores we inhabit) and by reducing Savage People to Humanity and Religion; not by those ways the Spaniards heretofore took in the Indies, who by their incredible ravages, having rendered themselves, and for their sakes, Heaven itself, abominated to the Indians, (for being courted to embrace our Religion, whose reward they were told, was the same Heaven that the Spaniards pretended too; the Poor Wretches refused the Condition, and would not accept of Heaven in the Company of the Spaniards) observed an ill Method to persuade 'em to that Religion which was the Way to that End which they at first had taught them to abhor. Nor (as you remember we observed with Indignation out of Ligon's History of the Barbadoes) as our own Countrymen do there (and our Brethren in divers other places) who refuse to make any Negro a Christian, lest they should lose the Slave; defacing at the same time that Christianity in themselves, which they refuse to the Negroes; and converting all that loud zeal, and those famous pretences of compassing Earth and Sea, for gaining Proselytes to Heaven; to get poor Heathens to work their Plantations; and resolving still to keep 'em such: Most unhappy Wretches! condemned to a first heavy thraldom here, and (as far as in us lies) to a second intolerable one hereafter. From which, though their present Owners, (for whose sakes only these poor Wretches seem to breath) believe, that they could present 'em with the only effectual means of their deliverance, yet, not to sustain the damage, by their Conversion, the hazard of the 30 pieces (the usual price of a Man Negro, and the fatally preferred one to a rejected Saviour) they withhold it from 'em; and refuse to offer 'em a Redeemer from either Bondage; as altogether minding, instead of Religion, and the Gospel, the Planting of Tobacco only, and Sugarcanes.  
But, when these our more generous Colonies, shall have prosecuted Nobler Ends, more beseeming Men and Christians; and propagated that Religion and Humanity abroad, which they shall have first Planted at home in their own Bosoms; They shall be no more a burden to themselves and their Relations, but an Honour to both, and to their whole Nation: Their Names shall be Registered among those of the Noblest Order and Sense of Mankind; Columbus, Americus, Magellane, Drake, Raleigh, Smith, etc. And by subduing the minds of Men, more than their Bodies, shall be ennobled with as great, but far more innocent Triumphs than Cortes and Pirarro for the Conquests of Peru and Mexico; In defect of Patrimony and Lands here; new Coasts, and unknown Regions shall submit to 'em, and bear their Names: And, instead of owing all their Reputation to some Ancestors expiring Merit, they shall gather fresh Honours from their proper virtue, and become the Sons of their own Fortune.  
As for that particular place, the Consideration of which, first led me to this Remark: Whenever the present, or the future Inhabitants of Salisbury, by understanding the advantage of their Situation, shall have converted the Avon to more proper uses, becoming so Noble a River, than those very little ones it now serves for; They will then reap the true benefit of their descent from the Old dry Hill where their City was first seated; and shall celebrate their Names and Memories, who shall eminently lead on, and advance the work, with their Churches Magnificent Founder, the famous Richard Poor; or their Canonised Osmund. The Adventurers and Subscribers, besides the Honour of being Registered for the promoting so noble a work, will find a fuller and more certain return for their Moneys, than had they purchased Land; or employed it at Interest; or any other known way amongst us.  
The Merchant's Company will not only be such in Name, but will be truly such, when they shall receive and export their Goods by Water at their own doors; and not, as now, make Voyages by Land to distant Haven Towns, and embark all their Merchandizes in Carts. The Magistrates will not need to put in practice any of their former petty ways of relief (as some call d 'em; but others, Grievances) as their New-Brew-house, and Leather-Tokens, etc. nor be enforced to burden the Inhabitants with more Monthly Rates then there be Months in the year; when they shall be able to set all their Poor sufficiently on work; the employment of the place, being rather like to want Hands to manage it, than any Indigent Person want employment. And generally, all conditions of Men, in, and nigh the place, will share in the benefit the River will afford them; And the City which depends now for its subsistence, upon an Inn-land Trade, and the Western Road, will acquire the Reputation of a Port; and in the Catalogue of the Cities of this Kingdom, be ranked with Bristol.  
FINIS.