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AN HUMBLE PROPOSAL
TO THE
PEOPLE OF ENGLAND,
For the Increase of their
TRADE,
And Encouragement of their
MANUFACTURES;
Whether
The present uncertainty of Affairs
issues in
Peace or War.
By the Author of the COMPLETE TRADESMAN.
_LONDON_:
Printed for CHARLES RIVINGTON, at the _Bible_ and
_Crown_ in St. _Paul's_ Church-Yard: 1729.
(_Price One Shilling._)
PREFACE TO THE PEOPLE OF ENGLAND.
It deserves some notice, that just at, or soon after writing these sheets,
we have an old dispute warmly revived among us, upon the question of our
trade being declined, or not declined. I have nothing to do with the
parties, nor with the reason of their strife upon that subject; I think
they are wrong on both sides, and yet it is hardly worth while to set them
to rights, their quarrel being quite of another nature, and the good of
our trade little or nothing concerned in it.
Nor do they seem to desire to be set right, but rather to want an occasion
to keep up a strife which perhaps serves some other of their wicked
purposes, better than peace would do; and indeed, those who seek to
quarrel, who can reconcile?
I meddle not with the question, I say, whether trade be declined or not;
but I may easily show the people of England, that if they please to
concern themselves a little for its prosperity, it will prosper; and on
the contrary, if they will sink it and discourage it, it is evidently in
their power, and it will sink and decline accordingly.
You have here some popular mistakes with respect to our woollen
manufacture fairly stated, our national indolence in that very particular
reproved, and the consequence laid before you; if you will not make use of
the hints here given, the fault is nobody's but your own.
Never had any nation the power of improving their trade, and of advancing
their own manufactures, so entirely in their own hands as we have at this
time, and have had for many years past, without troubling the legislature
about it at all: and though it is of the last importance to the whole
nation, and, I may say, to almost every individual in it; nay, and that it
is evident you all know it to be so; yet how next to impossible is it to
persuade any one person to set a foot forward towards so great and so
good a work; and how much labour has been spent in vain to rouse us up to
it?
The following sheets are as one alarm more given to the lethargic age, if
possible, to open their eyes to their own prosperity; the author sums up
his introduction to it in this short positive assertion, which he is ready
to make good, viz., That if the trade of England is not in a flourishing
and thriving condition, the fault and only occasion of it is all our own,
and is wholly in our own power to mend, whenever we please.
SEASONABLE PROPOSAL, &c.
As by my title I profess to be addressing myself to Englishmen, I think I
need not tell them that they live by trade; that their commerce has raised
them from what they were to what they are, and may, if cultivated and
improved, raise them yet further to what they never were; and this in few
words is an index of my present work.
It is worth an Englishman's remark, that we were esteemed as a growing
thriving nation in trade as far back as in the reigns of the two last
Henries; manufactures were planted, navigation increased, the people began
to apply, and trade bringing in wealth, they were greatly encouraged; yet
in king Henry VIII.'s reign, and even towards the latter end of it, too,
we find several acts of parliament passed for regulating the price of
provisions, and particularly that beef and pork should not be sold in the
market for more than a halfpenny per pound avoirdupoise, and mutton and
veal at three farthings.
As the trading men to whom I write may make some estimate of things by
calculating one thing by another, so this leads them to other heads of
trade to calculate from; as, first, the value of money, which bore some
proportion, though I think not a full and just equality to the provisions,
as follows:--silver was at 2s. 4d. per ounce, and gold at 2_l._ 5s. to
2_l._ 10s. per ounce; something less in the silver, and more in the gold
than half of the present value.
As for the rate of lands and houses, they bore a yet greater distance in
value from what they produce now; so that indeed it bears no proportion,
for we find the rent of lands so raised, and their value so improved, that
there are many examples where the lands, valued even in queen Elizabeth's
days at 20_l._ to 25_l._ per annum, are now worth from 200_l._ to 300_l._
per annum, and in some places much more.
It is true, this advance is to be accounted for by the improvement made of
the soil, by manuring, cultivating, and enclosing; by stocks of cattle, by
labour, and by the arts of husbandry, which are also improved; and so this
part is not so immediately within my present design; it is a large
subject, and merits to be spoken of at large by itself; because as the
improvement of land has been extraordinary great, and the landed interest
is prodigiously increased by it, so it is capable of much more and greater
improvement than has been made for above a hundred years past. But this I
say is not my present design; it is too great an article to be couched in
a few words.
Yet it requires this notice here; viz., that trade has been a principal
agent even in the improvement of our land; as it has furnished the money
to the husbandman to stock his land, and to employ servants and labourers
in the working part; and as it has found him a market for the consumption
of the produce of his land, and at an advanced price too, by which he has
received a good return to enable him to go on.
The short inference from these premises is this: as by trade the whole
kingdom is thus advanced in wealth, and the value of lands, and of the
produce of lands, and of labour, is so remarkably increased, why should we
not go on with vigour and spirit in trade, and by all proper and possible
methods and endeavours, increase and cultivate our commerce; that we may
still increase and improve in wealth, in value of lands, in stock, and in
all the arts of trade, such as manufactures, navigation, fishery,
husbandry, and, in short, study an improvement of trade in all its
branches.
No doubt it would be our wisdom to do thus; and nothing of the kind can be
more surprising than that it should not be our practice; and thus I am
brought down to the case before me.
If it should be objected that the remark is needless, that we are an
industrious and laborious people, that we are the best manufacturers in
the world, thoroughly versed in all the methods and arts for that purpose;
and that our trade is improved to the utmost in all places, and all cases
possible; if it should, I say, be thus argued, for I know some have such a
taint of our national vanity that they do talk at this rate,--
My answer is short, and direct in the negative; and I do affirm that we
are not that industrious, applying, improving people that we pretend to
be, and that we ought to be, and might be. That we are the best
manufacturers I deny; and yet at the same time I grant that we make the
best manufactures in the world; but the reason of that is greatly owing
not to our own skill exceeding others, so much as to our being furnished
from the bounty of Heaven with the best materials and best conveniencies
for the work, of any nation in the world, of which I shall take notice in
its place.
But not to dwell upon our capacities for improving in trade, I might clear
all that part without giving up the least article of my complaint; for it
is not our capacity to improve that I call in question, but our
application to the right methods; nay, I must add, that while I call upon
your diligence, and press you to application, I am supposed to grant your
capacities; otherwise I was calling upon you to no purpose, and pressing
you to do what at the same time I allowed you had no power to perform.
Without complimenting your national vanity, therefore, I am to grant you
have not only the means of improvement in your hands, but the capacity of
improving also; and on this account I must add, are the more inexcusable
if the thing is not in practice.
Indeed it is something wonderful, and not easy to be accounted for, that a
whole nation should, as if they were in a lethargic dream, shut their eyes
to the apparent advantages of their commerce; and this just now, when
their circumstances seem so evidently to stand in need of encouragement,
and that they are more than ordinarily at a kind of stop in their usual
progression of trade.
It is debated much among men of business, whether trade is at this time in
a prosperous and thriving condition, or in a languishing and declining
state; or, in a word, whether we are going backwards or forward. I shall
not meddle with that debate here, having no occasion to take up the little
space allowed me in anything remote from my design. But I will propose it
as I really believe it to be: namely, that we are rather in a state of
balance between both, a middle between the extremes; I hope we are not
much declined, and I fear we are not much advanced. But I must add, that
if we do not immediately set about some new methods for altering this
depending condition, we shall soon decline; and on the contrary, if we
should exert ourselves, we have before us infinite advantages of improving
and advancing our commerce, and that to a great degree.
This is stating it to the meanest understanding; there is no mystery at
all in the thing; if you will apply, you will rise; if you will remain
indolent and inactive, you will sink and starve. Trade in England, at this
time, is like a ship at sea, that has sprung a leak in sight of the shore,
or within a few days' sail of it; if the crew will ply their pump and work
hard, they may not only keep her above water, but will bring her safe into
port; whereas if they neglect the pump, or do not exert their strength,
the water grows upon them and they are in apparent danger of sinking
before they reach the shore.
Or, if you will have a coarser comparison, take the pump room in the
rasp-house, or house of correction, at Amsterdam; where the slothful
person is put into a good, dry, and wholesome room, with a pump at one
side and a spring or water-pipe at the other; if he pleases to work, he
may live and keep the water down, but if he sleeps he drowns.
The moral is exactly the same in both cases, and suits with the present
circumstances of our trade in England most exactly, only with this
difference to the advantage of the latter; namely, that the application
which I call upon the people of England to exert themselves in, is not a
mere labour of the hand; I do not tax the poor with mere sloth and
negligence, idly lying still when they should work, that is not our
grievance at present; for though there may be too much of that sort too,
among a few of the drunken, loitering part of mankind, and they suffer for
it sufficiently in their poverty, yet that, I say, is not the point,
idleness is not here a national crime, the English are not naturally a
slothful, indolent, or lazy people.
But it is an application proper to the method of business which is wanting
among us, and in this we shall find room for reproof on one hand, and
direction on the other; and our reader, I dare say, will acknowledge there
is reason for both.
It must in the first place be acknowledged, that England has indeed the
greatest encouragement for their industry of any nation in Europe; and as
therefore their want of improving those advantages and encouragements,
lays them more open to our just reproof, than other nation's would be, or
can be who want them, so it moves me with the more importunity to press
home the argument, which reason and the nature of the thing furnishes, to
persuade them. Reason dictates that no occasion should be let slip by
which England above all nations in the world should improve the advantages
they have in their hands; not only because they have them, but because
their people so universally depend upon them. The manufactures are their
bread, the life, the comfort of their poor, and the soul of their trade;
nature dictates, that as they are given them to improve, and that by
industry and application they are capable of being improved; so they ought
to starve if they do not improve them to the utmost.
Let us see in a few words what nature and providence has done for us; nay,
what they have done for us exclusive of the rest of the world. The bounty
of Heaven has stored us with the principles of commerce, fruitful of a
vast variety of things essential to trade, and which call upon us as it
were in the voice of nature, bidding us work, and with annexed
encouragement to do so from the visible apparent success of industry. Here
the voice of the world is plain, like the answer of an oracle; thus, dig
and find, plough and reap, fish and take, spin and live; in a word, trade
and thrive; and this with such extraordinary circumstances, that it is as
if there was a bar upon the neighbouring nations, and it had been spoken
from Heaven thus: These are for you only, and not for any other nation;
you, my favourites, of England; you, singled out to be great, opulent,
powerful, above all your neighbours, and to be made so by your own
industry and my bounty.
To explain this, allow me a small digression, to run over the detail of
Heaven's bounty, and see what God and nature has done for us beyond what
it has done for other nations; nature, as I have said, will dictate to us
what Heaven expects from us, for the improving the blessings bestowed, and
for making ourselves that rich and powerful people which he has determined
us to be.
Our country is furnished, I say, with the principles of commerce in a very
extraordinary manner; that is to say, so as no other country in Europe, or
perhaps in the world, is supplied with.
I. With the product of the earth. This is of two kinds: 1. That of the
inside or bowels of the earth, the same of which, as above, the voice of
Heaven to us, is, dig and find, under which article is principally our
lead, and tin-coal; I name these only, because of these this island seems
to have an exclusive grant; there being none, or but very small quantities
of them, found in any other nation; and it is upon exclusive benefits that
I am chiefly speaking. 2. We have besides these, iron, copper, _lapis
calaminaris_, vulgarly called callamy, with several other minerals, which
may be said to be in common to us and the rest of the world, of which the
particulars at large, and the places where they are found, may be fully
seen in a late tract, of which I shall have frequently occasion to speak
in this work, entitled, A Plan of the Commerce of Great Britain, to which
I refer, as indeed to a general index of the trade and produce of this
whole island.
II. The product of the surface, which I include in that part, plough and
reap; and though this is not indeed an exclusive product, yet I may
observe that the extraordinary increase which our lands, under an
excellent cultivation, generally yield, as well in corn and cattle, is an
uncommon argument for the industry of the husbandmen; and I might enter
into a comparison with advantage, against almost any countries in Europe,
by comparing the quantity produced on both sides, with the quantity of
land which produce those quantities.
You may find some calculations of the produce of our own country in the
book above mentioned, viz., The Plan of the Commerce of Great Britain,
where the consumption of malt in England is calculated by the value of the
duties of excise, and where it appears that there is annually consumed in
England, besides what is exported to foreign countries, forty millions of
bushels of malt, besides also all the barley, the meal of which is made
into bread, which is a very great quantity; most of the northern counties
in England feeding very much upon barley bread; and besides all the barley
either exported or used at home in the corn unmalted; all which put
together, I am assured, amounts to no less than ten millions of bushels
more.
The quantity of barley only is so exceeding great, that I am told it
bears, in proportion to the land it grows on, an equality to as much land
in France, as all the sowed land in the whole kingdom of England; or take
it thus, that fifty millions of bushels of barley growing in France, would
take up as much ground as all the lands which are at any time sowed in
England with any corn, whether barley, oats, or wheat.
N. B. I do not say all the arable lands of England, because we know there
are a very great number of acres of land which every year lie fallow
(though in tillage) and unsowed, according to the usage of our husbandry;
so they cannot be reckoned to produce any corn at all, otherwise the
quantity might be much greater.
This is a testimony of the fertility of our soil; and on the other hand,
the fertility is a testimony of the diligence and application of our
people, and the success which attends that diligence.
We are told that in some parts of England, especially in the counties of
Essex, Hertford, Cambridge, Bedford, Bucks, Oxford, Northampton, Lincoln,
and Nottingham, it is very frequent to have the lands produce from seven
to ten quarters of barley upon an acre, which is a produce not heard of in
the most fruitful of all those we call corn countries abroad, much less in
France. On the contrary, if they have a great produce of corn, it is
because they have a vast extent of land for it to grow upon, and which
land they either have no other use for, or it may be is fit for no other
use; whereas our corn grounds are far from being the richest or the best
of our lands, the prime of our land being laid up, as the ploughmen call
it, to feed upon, that is, to keep dairies of cows, as in Essex, Suffolk,
and the fens; or for grazing grounds, for fatting the large mutton and
beef, for which England is so particularly famed. These grazing countries
are chiefly in Sussex, and in the marshes of Romney, and other parts in
Kent; also in the rich vales of Aylesbury, and others in Bucks and
Berkshire, the isle of Ely, the bank of Trent, the counties of Lincoln,
Leicester and Stafford, Warwick and Chester, as also in the county of
Somerset, Lancaster, north riding of Yorkshire, and bank of Tees, in the
bishoprick of Durham.
When this product of England is considered, the diligence and success of
our husbandry in England will be found to be beyond that of the most
industrious people in Europe. But I must not dwell here, my view lies
another way; nor do the people of England want so much to be called upon
to improve in husbandry, as they do in manufactures and other things; not
but that even in this, the lands not yet cultivated do call aloud upon us
too; but I say it is not the present case.
I come in the next article to that yet louder call of the oracle, as
above, namely, fish and take. Indeed this is an improvement not fully
preserved, or a produce not sufficiently improved; the advantages nature
offers here cannot be said to be fully accepted of and embraced.
This is a large field, and much remains to be said and done too in it, for
the increase of wealth, and the employment of our people; and though I am
not of the opinion which some have carried to an unaccountable length in
this case, viz., that we should set up the fishery by companies and
societies, which has been often attempted, and has proved abortive and
ill-grounded; or that we ought by force, or are able by all our advantages
to beat out the Dutch from it; yet we might certainly very much enlarge
and increase our own share in it; take greater quantities than we do; cure
and pack them better than we do; come sooner to market with them than we
do; and consume greater quantities at home than we do; the consequence of
which would be that we should breed up and employ more seamen, build and
fit out more fishing-vessels and ships for merchandise than we do now, and
which we are unaccountably blameable that we do not.
And here I must observe, that the increasing the fishery would even
contribute to our vending as well as catching a greater quantity of fish,
and to take off the disadvantage which we now lie under with the Dutch, by
the consequence of trade in the fishery itself. The case is this: the
chief market for white herring, which is the fishery I am speaking of, is
the port of Dantzic and Konigsberg, from which ports the whole kingdom of
Poland, and great duchy of Lithuania, are supplied with fish by the
navigation of the great river of the Vistula, and the smaller rivers of
the Pragel and Niemen, &c.
The return brought from thence is in canvass, oak, and spruce, plank and
timber, sturgeon, some hemp and flax, pot ashes, &c., but chiefly corn.
Here the Dutch have an infinite advantage of us, which is never to be
surmounted or overcome, and for which reason it is impossible for us ever
to beat them out of this trade; viz., the Dutch send yearly a very great
number of ships to Dantzic, &c., to fetch corn; some say they send a
thousand sail every year; and I believe they do send so many ships, or
those ships going so many times, or making so many voyages in the year as
amounts to the same number of freights, and so is the same thing.
All these ships going for corn for the Dutch, have their chief supply of
corn from that country; it follows, then, that their herrings are carried
for nothing, seeing the ships which carry them must go light if they did
not carry the fish; whereas, on the other hand, our fish must pay freight
in whatever vessel it may go.
When our ships, then, from Scotland, for there the fishery chiefly lies,
and from thence the trade must take its rise; I say, when they have
carried their fish to the ports above-named, of Dantzic and Konigsberg,
how must they come back, and with what shall they be loaded?
The only answer that can be given is, that they must bring back the goods
mentioned before, or, in shorter terms, naval stores, though indeed not
much of naval stores neither, except timber and plank, for the hemp and
tar, which are the main articles, are fetched further; viz., from Riga,
Revel, Narva, and Petersburg. But suppose after delivering their fish,
some of the ships should go to those ports to seek freight, and load naval
stores there, which is the utmost help in the trade that can be expected.
The next question is, whither shall they carry them, and for whose account
shall they be loaden? To go for Scotland, would not be an answer; for
Scotland, having but a few ships, could not take off any quantity
proportioned to such a commerce; for if we were to push the Dutch out of
the trade, we must be supposed to employ two or three hundred sail of
ships at least, to carry herrings to Dantzic, &c.
To say they might take freight at London, and load for England, would be
no answer neither; for besides that even England itself would not take off
a quantity of those goods equal to the number of ships which would want
freight, so if England did, yet those ships would still have one dead
freight, for they would be left to go light home at last, to Scotland,
otherwise how shall they be at hand to load next year? And even that one
dead freight would abate the profit of the voyage; and so still the Dutch
would have the advantage.
Upon the whole, take it how and which way we will, it will for ever be
true, that though our fish were every way equal to the Dutch, which yet
we cannot affirm, and though it came as soon to market, and carried as
good a price there, all which I fear must a little fall short, yet it
would still be true that the Dutch would gain and we should lose.
There is yet another addition to the advantage of Holland, viz., in the
return of money; that whereas when our fish shall be sold, we shall want
to remit back the produce in money; that is to say, so much of it as
cannot be brought back in goods. And the difference in the exchange must
be against us; but it is in favour of the Dutch; for if they did not send
their herrings and other fish to Dantzic, they must remit money to pay for
their corn; and even as it is, they are obliged to send other goods, such
as whale oil, the produce of their Greenland fishery, English
manufactures, and the like; whereas the Scots' merchants, having no market
for corn, and not a demand for a sufficient value in naval stores, &c.,
viz. the product of the country, must bring the overplus by exchange to
their loss, the exchange running the other way.
It is true, this is a digression; but it is needful to show how weak those
notions are, which prompt us to believe we are able to beat the Dutch out
of the fishing trade by increasing our number of busses, and taking a
larger quantity of fish.
But this brings me back to the first argument; if you can find a way to
enlarge your shipping in the fishery, and send greater quantities of fish
to market, and yet sell them to advantage, you would by consequence
enlarge your demand for naval stores, and so be able to bring more ships
home loaden from thence; that is to say, to dispose of more of their
freight at home; and indeed nothing else can do it.
N. B. This very difference in the trade is the reason why a greater
quantity of English manufactures are not sent from hence to Dantzic, as
was formerly done; viz., not that the consumption of those goods is
lessened in Poland, or that less woollen manufactures are demanded at
Dantzic or at Konigsberg; but it is that the Dutch carry our manufactures
from their own country; this they can do to advantage; besides their
costing nothing freight, as above, though they are sold to little or no
profit, because they want the value there to pay for their corn, and must
otherwise remit money to loss for the payment.
As these things are not touched at before in any discourses on this
subject, but we are daily filled with clamours and complaints at the
indolence and negligence of our Scots and northern Britons, for not
outworking the Dutch in their fishing trade, I think it is not foreign to
the purpose to have thus stated the case, and to have shown that it is not
indeed a neglect in our management, that the Dutch thrive in the fishing
trade, and we sit still, as they call it, and look on, which really is not
so in fact, but that the nature of the thing gives the advantage to the
Dutch, and throws the trade into their hands, in a manner that no industry
or application of ours could or can prevent.
Having thus vindicated our people where they are really not deserving
blame, let us look forward from hence and see with the same justice where
they are in another case likewise less to blame than is generally
imagined; namely, in the white fishing, or the taking of cod-fish in these
northern seas, which is also represented as if it was so plentiful of fish
that any quantity might be taken and cured, and so the French, the Scots,
and the Portuguese, might be supplied from hence much cheaper and more to
advantage than by going so long a voyage as to the banks of Newfoundland.
This also is a mistake, and the contrary is evident; that there is a good
white fishing upon the coast, as well of the north part of the British
coast as on the east side of Scotland, is very true; the Scots, to give
them their due, do cure a tolerable quantity of fish, even in or near the
frith of Edinburgh; also there is a good fishery for cod on the west side,
and among the islands of the Leuze, and the other parts called the western
islands of Scotland; but the mistake lies in the quantity, which is not
sufficient to supply the demand in those ports mentioned above, nor is it
such as makes it by far so easy to load a ship as at Newfoundland, where
it is done in the one-fifth part of the time, and consequently so much
cheaper; and the author of this has found this to be so by experience.
Yet it cannot be said with justice that the Scots' fishermen are
negligent, and do not improve this fishing to advantage, for that really
they do kill and cure as many as can be easily done to make them come
within a price, and more cannot be done; that is to say, it would be to no
purpose to do it; for it will for ever be true in trade, that what cannot
be done to advantage, may be said not to be possible to be done; because
gain is the end of commerce, and the merchant cannot do what he cannot get
by.
It may be true that in the herring fishery the consumption might be
increased at home, and in some places also abroad, and so far that fishery
is not so fully pursued; but I do not see that the increase of it can be
very considerable, there being already a prodigious quantity cured more
than ever in Ireland on every side of that kingdom, and also on the west
of England; but if it may be increased, so much the more will be the
advantage of the commerce; of which by itself.
But from this I come to the main article of the British trade, I mean our
wool, or, as it is generally expressed, the woollen manufacture, and this
is what I mean, when I said as above, spin and live.
In this likewise I must take the liberty to say, and insist upon it, that
the English people cannot be said to be idle or slothful, or to neglect
the advantages which are put into their hands of the greatest manufactures
in Europe, if not in the whole world.
On the other hand, the people of England have run up their manufactures to
such a prodigy of magnitude, that though it is extended into almost every
part of the known world, I mean, the world as it is known in trade; yet
even that whole world is scarce equal to its consumption, and is hardly
able to take off the quantity; the negligence therefore of the English
people is not so much liable to reproof in this part, as some pretend to
tell us; the trade of our woollen manufacture being evidently increased
within these few years past, far beyond what it ever was before.
I know abundance of our people talk very dismal things of the decay of our
woollen manufacture, and that it is declined much they insist upon it;
being prohibited in many places and countries abroad, of their setting up
other manufactures of their own in the room of it, of their pretending to
mimick and imitate it, and supply themselves with the produce of their own
land, and the labour of their own people, and indeed France has for many
years gone some length in this method of erecting woollen manufactures in
the room of ours, and making their own productions serve instead of our
completely finished manufacture: but all these imitations are weak and
unperforming, and show abundantly how little reason we have to apprehend
their endeavours, or that they will be able to supplant our manufacture
there or any where else; for that even in France itself, where the
imitation of our manufactures is carried on to the utmost perfection; yet
they are obliged to take off great quantities of our finest and best
goods; and such is the necessity of their affairs, that they to this day
run them in, that is, import them clandestinely at the greatest risk, in
spite of the strictest prohibition, and of the severest penalties, death
and the galleys excepted; a certain token that their imitation of our
manufactures is so far from pleasing and supplying other parts of the
world, that they are not sufficient to supply, or good enough to please
themselves.
I must confess the imitating our manufactures has been carried further in
France than in any other part of the world, and yet we do not see they
have been able so to affect the consumption as to have any visible
influence upon our trade; or, that we abate the quantity which we usually
made, but that if they have checked the export at all, we have still found
other channels of trade which have fully carried off our quantity, and
shall still do so, though other nations were able to imitate us to, and
this is very particularly stated and explained by the author of the book
above mentioned, called the Plan of the English Commerce, where the
extending our manufactures is handled more at large than I have room for
in the narrow compass of this tract, and therefore I again refer my reader
thither, as to the fountain head.
But I go on to touch the heads of things. The French do imitate our
manufactures in a better manner, and in greater quantity than other
nations; and why do we not prevent them? It is a terrible satire upon our
vigilance, or upon the method of our custom-house men, that we do not
prevent it; seeing the French themselves will not stick to acknowledge,
that without a supply of our wool, which is evident they have now with
very small difficulty from Ireland, they could do little in it, and indeed
nothing at all to the purpose.
On the other hand, it is not so with France in regard to their silk
manufactures, in which although we have not the principles of the work, I
mean the silk growing within our dominions, but are obliged to bring it
from Italy, yet we have so effectually shut out the French silk
manufactures from our market, that in a word we have no occasion at all
for them; nay, if you will believe some of our manufacturers, the French
buy some of our wrought silks and carry them into France; but whether the
particular be so in fact or no, this I can take upon me from good evidence
to affirm, that whereas we usually imported in the ordinary course of
trade, at least a million to twelve hundred thousand pounds' value a year
in wrought silks from France; now we import so little as is not worth
naming; and yet it is allowed that we do not wear less silk, or silks of a
meaner value, than we usually did before, so that all the difference is
clear gain on the English side in the balance of trade.
The contemplation of this very article furnishes a most eminent
encouragement to our people, to increase and improve their trade; and
especially to gain upon the rest of Europe, in making all the most useful
manufactures of other nations their own.
Nor would this increase of our trade be a small article in the balance of
business, when we come to calculate the improvement we have made in that
particular article, by encroaching upon our neighbours, more than they
have been able to make upon us; and this also you will find laid down at
large in the account of the improvement of our manufactures in general,
calculated in the piece above mentioned, chap. v. p. 164.
If then the encroachments of France upon our woollen manufactures are so
small, as very little to influence our trade, or lessen the quantity made
here, and would be less if due care was taken to keep our wool out of
their hands; and that at the same time we have encroached upon their trade
in the silk manufactures only, besides others, such as paper, glass,
linen, hats, &c., to the value of twelve hundred thousand pounds a year,
then France has got little by prohibiting the English manufactures, and
perhaps had much better have let it alone.
However, I must not omit here what is so natural a consequence from these
premises, viz., that here lies the first branch of our Humble Proposal to
the People of England for Increase of their Commerce, and Improvement of
their Manufactures; namely, that they would keep their wool at home.
I know it will be asked immediately how shall it be done? and the answer
indeed requires more time and room to debate it, than can be allowed me
here. But the general answer must be given; certainly it is practicable to
be done, and I am sure it is absolutely necessary. I shall say more to it
presently.
But I go on with the discourse of the woollen manufactures in general;
nothing is more certain, than that it is the greatest and most extensive
branch of our whole trade, and, as the piece above mentioned says
positively, is really the greatest manufacture in the world. Vide Plan,
chap. v. p. 172. 179.
Nor can the stop of its vent, in this or that part of the world, greatly
affect it; if foreign trade abates its demand in one place, it increases
it in another; and it certainly goes on increasing prodigiously every
year, in direct confutation of the phlegmatic assertions of those, who,
with as much malice as ignorance, endeavour to run it down, and depreciate
its worth as well as credit, by their ill-grounded calculations.
We might call for evidence in this cause the vast increase of our
exportation in the woollen manufactures only to Portugal; which, for above
twenty-five years past, has risen from a very moderate trade to such a
magnitude, that we now export more woollen goods in particular yearly to
Portugal, than both Spain and Portugal took off before, notwithstanding
Spain has been represented as so extraordinary a branch of trade. The
occasion of this increase is fully explained, by the said Plan of the
English Commerce, to be owing to the increase of the Portuguese colonies
in the Brazils, and in the kingdoms of Congo and Angola on the west side
of Africa; and of Melinda and the coast of Zanguebar on the east side; in
all which the Portuguese have so civilized the natives and black
inhabitants of the country, as to bring them, where they went even stark
naked before, to clothe decently and modestly now, and to delight to do
so, in such a degree as they will hardly ever be brought to go unclothed
again; and all these nations are clothed more or less with our English
woollen manufactures, and the same in proportion in their East India
factories.
The like growth and increase of our own colonies, is another article to
confirm this argument, viz., that the consumption of our manufactures is
increased: it is evident that the number of our people, inhabitants of
those colonies, visibly increases every day; so must by a natural
consequence the consumption of the cloths they wear.
And this increase is so great, and is so demonstrably growing every day
greater, that it is more than equal to all the decrease occasioned by the
check or prohibitions put upon our manufactures, whether by the imitation
of the French or any other European nation.
I might dwell upon this article, and extend the observation to the East
Indies, where a remarkable difference is evident between the present and
the past times; for whereas a few years past the quantity of European
goods, whether of English or other manufactures, was very small, and
indeed not worth naming; on the contrary, now the number of European
inhabitants in the several factories of the English, Dutch, and
Portuguese, is so much increased, and the people who are subject to them
also, and who they bring in daily to clothe after the European fashion,
especially at Batavia, at Fort St. George, at Surat, Goa, and other
principal factories, that the demand for our manufactures is grown very
considerable, and daily increasing. This also the said Plan of the
Commerce insists much on, and explains in a more particular manner.
But to proceed: not only our English colonies and factories are increased,
as also the Portuguese in the Brazils, and in the south part of Africa;
not only the factories of the English and Dutch in the East Indies are
increased, and the number of Europeans there being increased call for a
greater quantity of European goods than ever; but even the Spaniards, and
their colonies in the West Indies, I mean in New Spain, and other
dominions of the Spaniards in America, are increased in people, and that
not so much the Spaniards themselves, though they too are more numerous
than ever, but the civilized free Indians, as they are called, are
exceedingly multiplied.
These are Indians in blood, but being native subjects of Spain, know no
other nation, nor do they speak any other language than Spanish, being
born and educated among them. They are tradesmen, handicrafts, and bred to
all kinds of business, and even merchants too, as the Spaniards are, and
some of them exceeding rich; of these they tell us there are thirty
thousand families in the city of Lima only, and doubtless the numbers of
these increase daily.
As all these go clothed like Spaniards, as well themselves as their wives,
children, and servants, of which they have likewise a great many, so it
necessarily follows that they greatly increase the consumption of European
goods, and that the demand of English manufactures in particular increases
in proportion, these manufactures being more than two-thirds of the
ordinary habit or dress of those people, as it is also of the furniture of
their houses; all which they take from their first patrons, the Spaniards.
It will seem a very natural inquiry here, how I can pretend to charge the
English nation with indolence or negligence in their labouring or working
their woollen manufactures; when it is apparent they work up all the wool
which their whole nation produces, that the whole growth and produce of
their sheep is wrought up by them, and that they buy a prodigious quantity
from Ireland and Scotland, and work up all that too, and that with this
they make such an infinite quantity of goods, that they, as it were, glut
and gorge the whole world with their manufactures.
My answer is positive and direct, viz., that notwithstanding all this,
they are chargeable with an unaccountable, unjustifiable, and, I had
almost said, a most scandalous indolence and neglect, and that in respect
to this woollen manufacture in particular; a neglect so gross, that by it
they suffer a manifest injury in trade. This neglect consists of three
heads:
1. They do not work up all the wool which they might come at, and which
they ought to work up, and about which they have still spare hands enough
to set to work.
2. They with difficulty sell off or consume the quantity of goods they
make; whereas they might otherwise vend a much greater quantity, both
abroad and at home.
3. They do not sufficiently apply themselves to the improving and
enlarging their colonies abroad, which, as they are already increased, and
have increased the consumption of the manufactures, so they are capable of
being much further improved, and would thereby still further improve and
increase the manufactures. By so much as they do not work up the wool, by
so much they neglect the advantage put into their hands; for the wool of
Great Britain and Ireland is certainly a singular and exclusive gift from
Heaven, for the advantage of this great and opulent nation. If Heaven has
given the wool, and we do not improve the gift by manufacturing it all up,
so far we are to be reproached with indolence and neglect; and no wonder
if the wool goes from Ireland to France by whole shiploads at a time; for
what must the poor Irish do with their wool? If they manufacture it we
will not let them trade with those manufactures, or export them beyond
sea. Our reasons for that prohibition are indeed very good, though too
long to debate in this place: but no reason can be alleged that can in any
sense of the thing be justifiable, why we should not either give leave to
export the manufactures, or take the wool.
But to speak of the reason to ourselves, for the other is a reason to them
(I mean the Irish). The reason to ourselves is this: we ought to take the
wool ourselves, that the French might not have it to erect and imitate our
own manufactures in France, and so supplant our trade.
Certainly, if we could take the whole quantity of the Irish wool off their
hands, we might with ease prevent it being carried to France; for much of
it goes that way, merely because they cannot get money for it at home.
This I charge therefore as a neglect, and an evident proof of indolence;
namely, that we do not take effectual care to secure all the wool in
Ireland; give the Irish money for it at a reasonable market price, and
then cause it to be brought to England as to the general market.
I know it will be objected, that England does already take off as much as
they can, and as much as they want; and to bring over more than they can
use, will sink the market, and be an injury to ourselves; but I am
prepared to answer this directly and effectually, and you shall have a
full reply to it immediately.
But, in the mean time, this is a proof of the first proposition; namely,
that we do not work up all our own wool, for the Irish wool is, and ought
to be, esteemed as our own, in the present debate about trade; for that it
is carried away from our own dominions, and is made use of by those that
rival our manufactures to the ruin of our own trade.
That the Irish are prohibited exporting their wool, is true; but it seems
a little severe to prohibit them exporting their wool, and their
manufactures too, and then not to buy the wool of them neither.
It is alleged by some, that we do take off all the wool they bring us, and
that we could and would take it all, if they would bring it all. To this I
answer; if the Irish people do not bring it all to us, it is either that
it is too far for the poor people who own the wool to bring it to the
south and east coast of Ireland, there being no markets in the west and
north-west parts of that island, where they could sell it; and the farmers
and sheep-breeders are no merchants, nor have they carriage for so long a
journey; but either the public ought to appoint proper places whether it
shall be carried, and where they would receive money for it at a certain
rate; or erect markets where those who deal in wool might come to buy, and
where those who have it to sell would find buyers.
No doubt but the want of buyers is the reason why so much of the Irish
wool is carried over to France; besides, if markets were appointed where
the poor farmers could always find buyers at one price or another, there
would be then no pretence for them to carry it away in the dark, and by
stealth, to the sea side, as is now the case; and the justice of
prohibitions and seizures would be more easily to be defended; indeed
there would be no excuse for the running it off, nor would there want any
excuse for seizing it, if they attempted to run it off.
But I am called upon to answer the objection mentioned above; namely, that
the manufactures in England do indeed already take off a very great
quantity of the Irish wool, as much as they have occasion for; nay, they
condescend so far to the Irish, as to allow them to manufacture a great
deal of that wool which they take off; that is to say, to spin it into
yarn, of which yarn so great a quantity is brought into England yearly, as
they assure us amounts to sixty thousand packs of wool; as may be seen by
a fair calculation in the book above mentioned, called the Plan; in a
word, that the English are not in a condition to take off any more. Now
this is that which leads me directly to the question in hand; whether the
English are able to take off any more of the Irish wool and yarn, or no. I
do not affirm, that, as the trade in England is now carried on, they are
able, perhaps they are not; but I insist, that if we were thoroughly
resolved in England to take such wise measures as we ought to take, and as
we are well able to do, for the improvement and increase of our
manufactures, we might and should be able to take off, and work up the
whole growth of the wool of Ireland; and this I shall presently
demonstrate, as I think, past doubt.
But before I come to the scheme for the performance of this, give me leave
to lay down some particulars of the advantage this would be to our
country, and to our commerce, supposing the thing could be brought to
pass; and then I shall show how easily it might be brought to pass.
1. By taking off this great quantity of wool and yarn, supposing one half
of the quantity to be spun, many thousands of the poor people of Ireland
who are now in a starving condition for want of employment, would be set
immediately to work, and be put in a condition to get their bread; so that
it would be a present advantage to the Irish themselves, and that far
greater than it can be now, their wool which goes away to France being all
carried off unwrought.
2. Due care being then taken to prevent any exportation of wool to France,
as, I take it for granted, might be done with much more ease when the
Irish had encouragement to sell their wool at home, we should soon find a
difference in the expense of wool, by the French being disabled from
imitating our manufactures abroad, and the consumption of our own would
naturally increase in proportion. First, they would not be able to thrust
their manufactures into foreign markets as they now do, by which the sale
of our manufactures must necessarily be abated; and, secondly, they would
want supplies at home, and consequently our manufactures would be more
called for, even in France itself, and that in spite of penalties and
prohibitions.
Thus by our taking off the Irish wool, we should in time prevent its
exportation to France; and by preventing its going to France, we should
disable the French, and increase the consumption of our own manufactures
in all the ports whither they now send them, and even in France itself.