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 imports
 into Pennsylvania from Britain?
A. Ihave been informed that our merchants compute
 the imports from Britain to be above five hundred
 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, Newfoundland,
 Carolina, and Georgia; by the same, carried
 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.