WOOLL.
[THE author appears to have merely commenced this chapter; which, as it
now stands in the manuscript, contains little more than is here
printed. The three succeeding chapters are connected in their subjects
with the present.—J. B.]
THIS nation is the most famous for the great quantity of wooll of any
in the world; and this county hath the most sheep and wooll of any
other. The down-wooll is not of the finest of England, but of about the
second rate. That of the common-field is the finest.
Quaere, if Castle Comb was not a staple for wooll, or else a very great
wooll-market?
Mr. Ludlowe, of the Devises, and his predecessours have been
wooll-breakers [brokers] 80 or 90 yeares, and hath promised to assist
me.
Quaere, if it would not bee the better way to send our wooll beyond the
sea again, as in the time of the staple? For the Dutch and French doe
spinn finer, work cheaper, and die better. Our cloathiers combine
against the wooll-masters, and keep their spinners but just alive: they
steale hedges, spoile coppices, and are trained up as nurseries of
sedition and rebellion.
[For a long series of years the clothiers, or manufacturers, and the
wool-growers, or landowners, entertained opposite opinions respecting
the propriety of exporting wool; and numerous acts of parliament were
passed at different times encouraging or restricting its exportation,
as either of these conflicting interests happened to prevail for the
time with the legislature. The landowners were generally desirous to
export their produce, without restriction, to foreign markets, and to
limit the importation of competing wool from abroad. The manufacturers,
on the contrary, wished for the free importation of those foreign
wools, without an admixture of which the native produce cannot be
successfully manufactured; whilst they were anxious to restrain the
exportation of British wool, from an absurd fear of injury to their own
trade. Some curious particulars of the contest between these parties,
and of the history of legislation on the subject, will be found in
Porter’s Progress of the Nation and McCulloch’s Commercial Dictionary
and Statistical Account of the British Empire; and more particularly in
Bischoff’s History of Wool (1842). The wool trade is now free from
either import or export duties.-J. B.]