Lloyds Evening Post and British Chronicle, vol. XIV no. 1040, 9–12 March N.S. 1764, p. 243: ‘Account of the Weekly Papers’.

To the North Briton, March 10th

Sir,

In No. 75 of your Paper, you mentioned that 248 Persons, of various occupations, had engaged with the Russian Ambassador to form a settlement in his Mistress's dominions, having previously met with a denial in their application for encouragement to do so in Florida. In the public Papers of this week I find the States of Holland have issued an arret, strictly forbidding, under the severest penalties, any of their subjects to accept the invitations given by the Ambassadors of that Power, at the several Courts where they reside, to foreigners to settle on some waste Lands of Russia, at the sole expence of the Empress. The Dutch, Sir, are a wise nation, and know the value of people too well to part with them. We have not only lost the service of these 248 persons, but that of their posterity. In a generation or two, thousands who might have been English subjects, will all be Russians. Every subject, on an average, consumes, I have been told, to the value of five pounds per annum in food and apparel; for the supply of which divers persons are employed.