Qn = 
Benjamin Franklin [1766 
A. About three hundred thousand, from sixteen 
to sixty years of age. 
Q. What may be the amount of one year’s im- 
ports into Pennsylvania from Britain? 
A. Ihave been informed that our merchants com- 
pute the imports from Britain to be above five hun- 
dred thousand pounds. 
(Q. What may be the amount of the produce of 
your province exported to Britain? 
A. It must be small, as we produce little that is 
wanted in Britain. I suppose it cannot exceed forty 
thousand pounds. 
Q. How then do you pay the balance? 
A. The balance is paid by our produce carried to 
the West Indies, and sold in our own islands, or to 
the French, Spaniards, Danes, and Dutch; by the 
same produce carried to other colonies in North 
America, as to New England, Nova Scotia, New- 
foundland, Carolina, and Georgia; by the same, car- 
ried to different parts of Europe, as Spain, Portugal, 
and Italy. In all which places we receive either 
money, bills of exchange, or commodities that suit for 
remittance to Britain; which, together with all the 
profits on the industry of our merchants and mariners, 
arising in those circuitous voyages, and the freights 
immediately to extend this clause to newly conquered countries. An 
exemption therefore was granted, in this particular, with respect to 
Canada and Grenada, for the space of five years, to be reckoned from 
the commencement of the duty. See the Stamp Act. 
1 Strangers excluded, some parts of the northern colonies doubled 
their numbers in fifteen or sixteen years; to the southward they were 
longer; but, taking one with another, they had doubled, by natural 
generation only, once in twenty-five years. Pennsylvania, including 
strangers, had doubled in about sixteen years.