wool which is sent annually from Ireland to France, and they have done it
by calculating, first how many packs of wool the whole kingdom of Ireland
may produce; and this they do again from the number of sheep which they
say are fed in Ireland in the whole. How right this calculation may be I
will not determine.
First, they tell us, there are fed in Ireland thirty millions of sheep,
and as all these sheep are supposed be sheared once every year, they must
produce exactly thirty millions of fleeces, allowing the fell wool in
proportion to the number of sheep killed.
It is observable, by a very critical account of the wool produced annually
in Romney marsh, in the county of Kent, and published in the said Plan of
the English Commerce, that the fleeces of wool of those large sheep,
generally weigh above four pounds and a half each. It is computed thus;
first he tells us that Romney marsh contains 47,110 acres of land, that
they feed 141,330 sheep, whose wool being shorn, makes up 2,523 packs of
wool, the sum of which is, that every acre feeds three sheep, every sheep
yields one fleece, and 56 fleeces make one pack of wool, all which comes
out to 2,523 packs of wool, twenty-three fleeces over, every pack weighing
two hundred and forty pounds of wool. Vide Plan, &c. p. 259.
I need not observe here, that the sheep in Ireland are not near so large
as the sheep in Romney marsh, these last being generally the largest breed
of sheep in England, except a few on the bank of the river Tees in the
bishoprick of Durham. Now if these large sheep yield fleeces of four
pounds and a half of wool, we may be supposed to allow the Irish sheep,
take them one with another, to yield three pounds of wool to a fleece, or
to a sheep, out of which must be deducted the fell wool, most of which is
of a shorter growth, and therefore cannot be reckoned so much by at least
a pound to a sheep. Begin then to account for the wool, and we may make
some calculation from thence of the number of sheep.
1. If of the Romney marsh fleeces, weighing four pounds and a half each,
fifty-six fleeces make one pack of wool; then seventy fleeces Irish wool,
weighing three pounds each fleece, make a pack.
2. If we import from Ireland one hundred thousand packs of wool, as well
in the fleece as in the yarn, then we import the wool of seven millions of
sheep fed in Ireland every year.
Come we next to the gross quantity of wool; as the Irish make all their
own manufactures, that is to say, all the woollen manufactures, needful
for their own use, such as for wearing apparel, house furniture, &c., we
cannot suppose but that they use much more than the quantity exported to
England, besides that, it is too well known, that notwithstanding the
prohibition of exportation, they do daily ship off great quantities of
woollen goods, not only to the West Indies, but also to France, to Spain,
and Italy; and we have had frequent complaints of our merchants from
Lisbon and Oporto, of the great quantity of Irish woollen manufactures
that are brought thither, as well broadcloth as serges, druggets, duroys,
frieze, long-ells, and all the other sorts of goods which are usually
exported from England; add these clandestine exportations to the necessary
clothing, furniture, and equipages, of that whole nation, in which are
reckoned two millions and a half of people, and we cannot suppose they
make use of less than two hundred thousand packs of wool yearly among
themselves, which is the wool of fourteen millions of sheep more.
We must, then, allow all the rest of the wool to be run or smuggled, call
it what you please, to France, which must be at least a hundred to a
hundred and twenty thousand packs more: for it seems the Irish tell us
that they feed thirty millions of sheep in the whole kingdom of Ireland.
If, then, they run over to France a hundred thousand packs of wool yearly,
which I take to be the least, all this amounts to twenty-eight millions of
fleeces together; the other two millions of fleeces may justly be deducted
for the difference between the quantity of wool taken from the sheep that
are killed, which we call fell wool, and the fleece wool shorn.
Upon the foot of this calculation, there are a hundred thousand packs of
wool produced in Ireland every year, which we ought to take off, and
which, for want of our taking it off, is carried away to France, where it
is wholly employed to mimick our manufactures and abuse our trade;
lessening thereby the demand of our own goods abroad, and even in France
itself. This, therefore, is a just reproach to our nation, and they are
certainly guilty of a great neglect in not taking off that wool, and more
effectually preventing it being carried away to France.
It must be confessed, that unless we do find some way to take off this
wool from the Irish, we cannot so reasonably blame them for selling it to
the French, or to anybody else that will buy, for what else can they do
with it, seeing you shut up all their ports against the manufacturers; at
least you shut them up as far as you are able; and if you will neither let
them manufacture it, for not letting them transport the manufacture when
made is in effect forbidding to make them; I say, if you will neither let
them manufacture their wool nor take it off their hands, what must they do
with it?
But I come next to the grand objection; namely, that we cannot take it
off, that we do take off as much as we can use, and a very great quantity
it is too; that we are not able to take more, that is to say, we know not
what to do with it if we take it; that we cannot manufacture it, or if we
do, we cannot sell the goods; and so, according to the known rule in
trade, that what cannot be done with profit or without loss, we may say of
it that it cannot be done; so in the sense of trade, we cannot take their
wool off, and if they must run it over to France, they must, we cannot
help it.
This, I say, is a very great mistake; and I do affirm, that as we ought to
take off the whole quantity of the Irish wool, so we may and are able to
do it. That our manufacture is capable of being so increased, and the
consumption of it increased also, as well at home as abroad; that it would
in the ordinary course of trade call for all the wool of Ireland, if it
were much more than it is, and employ it profitably; besides employing
many thousands of poor people more than are now employed, and who indeed
want employment.
Upon this foundation, and to bring this to be true, as I shall presently
make appear, I must add, that a just reproach lies upon us for indolence,
and an unaccountable neglect of our national interests, in not
sufficiently exerting ourselves to improve our trade and increase our
manufactures; which is the title, as it is the true design, of this whole
work.
The affirming, as above, that we are able to increase our manufacture, and
by that increase to take off more wool, may, perhaps, be thought an
arrogance too great to be justified, and would be a begging the question
in an egregious manner, if I were not in a condition to prove what I say;
I shall therefore apply myself directly to evidence, and to put it out of
doubt:--
By increasing our manufacture, I am content to be understood to mean the
increasing the consumption, otherwise, to increase quantity only, would be
to ruin the manufacturers, not improve the trade. This increasing the
consumption is to be considered under two generals.
1. The consumption at home.
2. The exportation, or consumption abroad.
I begin with the last; namely, the consumption abroad. This is too wide a
field to enter upon in particular here, I refer it to be treated at large
by itself; but as far as it serves to prove what I have affirmed above,
namely, that the consumption of our manufactures may be improved abroad,
so far it is needful to speak of it here; I shall confine it to the
English colonies and factories abroad.
It is evident, that by the increase of our colonies, the consumption of
our manufactures has been exceedingly increased; not only experience
proves it, but the nature of the thing makes it impossible to be
otherwise; the island of St. Christopher, is a demonstration beyond all
argument; that island is increased in its product and people, by the
French giving it up to us at the treaty of Utrecht. Its product of sugar
is almost equal to that of Barbadoes, and will in a very few years exceed
it; the exports from hence to that island are increased in proportion; why
then do we not increase our possessions, plant new colonies, and better
people our old ones? Both might be done to infinite advantage, as might be
made out, had we room for it, past contradiction.
We talk of, and expect a war with Spain; were the advantages which new
settlements in the abandoned countries of America, as well the island as
the continent considered, we should all wish for such a war, that the
English might by their superiority at sea, get and maintain a firm
footing, as well on the continent as the islands of America: there the
Spainards, like the fable of the dog in the manger, neither improve it
themselves, nor will admit others to improve; I mean in all the south
continent of America, from Buenos Ayres to port St. Julien, a country
fruitful, a climate healthful, able to maintain plentifully any numbers,
even to millions of people, with an uninterrupted communication within the
land, as far as to the golden mountain of the Andes or Cordilleras, where
the Chilians, unsubdued by any European power, a docible, civilized
people, but abhorring the Spaniards, would not fail to establish a
commerce infinitely profitable, exchanging gold for all your English
manufactures, to an inexpressible advantage.
Among the islands, why should not we, as well as the French, plant upon
the fruitful countries of Cuba and Hispaniola, as rich and capable of
raising sugars, cocoa, ginger, pimento, indigo, cotton, and all the other
productions usual in that latitude, as either the Barbadoes or Jamaica.
Our factories, for they cannot yet be called colonies, on the coast of
Africa, offer us the like advantages. Why are they not turned into
populous and powerful colonies, as they might be? Why not encouraged from
hence? And why is not their trade espoused and protected as our other
colonies and factories? but left to be ravaged by the naked and
contemptible negroes; plundered, and their trade ravished by the more
unjust and more merciless interlopers, who, instead of thieves, for they
are no better, would be called separate traders only, though they break in
by violence and fraud upon the property of an established company, and rob
them of their commerce, even under the protection of their own forts and
castles, which these paid nothing towards the cost of.
Why does not England enlarge and encourage the commerce of the coast of
Guinea? plant and fortify, and establish such possessions there as other
nations, the Portuguese for example, in the opposite coast on the same
latitude? Is it not all owing to the most unaccountable indolence and
neglect? What hinders but that we might ere now have had strong towns and
an inhabited district round them, and a hundred thousand Christians
dwelling at large in that country, as the Portuguese have now at Melinda,
in the same latitude, on the eastern coast?
And what hinders, but that same indolence and neglect, that they have not
there growing at this time, the coffee of Mocha, as the Dutch have at
Batavia; the tea of China, the cocoa of the Caraccas, the spices of the
Moluccas, and all the other productions of the remotest Indies, which grow
now in the same latitude, and which cost us so much treasure yearly to
purchase, and which, as has been tried, would prosper here as well as in
the countries from which we fetch them?
What a consumption of English manufacture would follow such a plantation?
and what an increase of trade would necessarily attend an increase of
people there?
I have not room to enlarge here upon these heads; they are fully stated in
the said Plan of English Commerce, and in several other tracts of trade
lately published by the same author, and to that I refer. See the Plan,
chap. iii. page 335. and chap. v. page 363.
I come next to the consumption at home, and here indeed the proof lies
heavy upon ourselves; nothing but an unaccountable supreme negligence of
our own apparent advantages can be the cause of the whole grievance; such
a negligence, as I think, no nation but the English are, or can be guilty
of; I mean no nation that has the like advantage of a manufacture, and
that has a hundred thousand packs of wool every year unwrought up, and a
million of people unemployed.
N. B. All our manufactures, whether of wool, silk, or thread, and all
other wares, hard or soft, though we have a very great variety, yet do not
employ all our people, by a great many; nay, we have some whole counties
into which the woollen, or silk, or linen manufacture, may be said never
to have set their feet, I mean as to the working part; or so little as not
to be worth naming; such in particular as Cambridge, Huntingdon, Hertford,
Bedford; the first three are of late indeed come into the spinning part a
little, but it is but very little; the like may be said of the counties of
Cheshire, Stafford, Derby, and Lincoln, in all which very little, if any,
manufactures are carried on; neither are the counties of Kent, Sussex,
Surry, or Hampshire, employed in any of the woollen manufactures worth
mentioning; the last indeed on the side about Alton and Alresford, may be
said to do a little; and the first just at Canterbury and Cranbrook. But
what is all they do compared to the extent of four counties so populous
that it is thought there are near a million of people in them?
Seeing then, I say, there are yet so many people want employ, and so much
wool unwrought up, and which for want of being thus wrought up, is carried
away by a clandestine, smuggling, pernicious trade, to employ our enemies
in trade, the French, and to endanger our manufactures at foreign markets,
how great is our negligence, and how much to the reproach of our country
is it, that we do not improve this trade, and increase the consumption of
the manufactures as we ought to do? I mean the consumption at home, for of
the foreign consumption I have spoken already.
It seems to follow here as a natural inquiry, after what has been said,
that we should ask, How is this to be done, and by what method can the
people of England increase the home consumption of their woollen
manufactures?
I cannot give a more direct answer to this question, or introduce what
follows in a better manner, than in the very words of the author of the
book so often mentioned above, as follows, speaking of this very thing,
thus:--
"The next branch of complaint," says this author, "is, that the
consumption of our woollen manufacture is lessened at home.
"This, indeed," continues he, "though least regarded, has the most truth
and reason in it, and merits to be more particularly inquired into; but
supposing the fact to be true, let me ask the complainer this question,
viz., why do we not mend it? and that without laws, without teazing the
parliament and our sovereign, for what they find difficult enough to
effect even by law? The remedy is our own, and in our own power. I say,
why do not the people of Great Britain, by general custom and by universal
consent, increase the consumption of their own manufacture by rejecting
the trifles and toys of foreigners?
"Why do we not appear dressed in the growth of our own country, and made
fine by the labour of our own hands?" Vide Plan of the English Commerce,
p. 252.
And again, p. 254; "We must turn the complaints of the people upon
themselves, and entreat them to encourage the manufactures of England by a
more general use and wearing of them. This alone would increase the
consumption, as that alone would increase the manufacture itself."
I cannot put this into a plainer or better way of arguing, or in words
more intelligible to every capacity.
Did ever any nation but ours complain of the declining of their trade and
at the same time discourage it among themselves? Complain that foreigners
prohibit our manufactures, and at the same time prohibit it themselves?
for refusing to wear it is the worst and severest way of prohibiting it.
We do indeed put a prohibition upon our trade when we stop up the stream,
and dam up the channel of its consumption, by putting a slight upon the
wearing it, and, as it were, voting it out of fashion; for if you once
vote your goods out of wear, you vote them out of the market, and you had
as good vote them contraband.
With what an impetuous gust of the fancy did we run into the product of
the East Indies for some years ago? How did we patiently look on and see
the looms empty, the workmen fled, the wives and children starve and beg,
the parishes loaded, and the poor's rates rise to a surprising height,
while the ladies flourished in fine Massulapatam, chints, Indian damasks,
China atlasses, and an innumerable number of rich silks, the product of
the coast of Malabar, Coromandel, and the Bay of Bengal, and the poorer
sort with calicoes? And with what infinite difficulty was a remedy
obtained, and with what regret did the ladies part with that foreign
pageantry, and stoop to wear the richest silks of their own manufacture,
though these were the life of their country's prosperity, and those the
ruin of it?
When this was the case, how fared our trade? The state of it was thus, in
a few words:--
The poor, as above, wanted bread; the wool lay on hand, sunk in price, and
wanted a market; the manufacturers wanted orders, and when they made
goods, knew not where to sell them; all was melancholy and dismal on that
side; nothing but the East India trade could be said to thrive; their
ships went out full of money and came home full of poison; for it was all
poison to our trade. The immense sums of ready money that went abroad to
India impoverished our trade, and indeed bid fair to starve it, and, in a
word, to beggar the nation.
At home we were so far from working up the whole quantity or growth of our
wool, that three or four years' growth lay on hand in the poor tenants'
houses, for want of which they could not pay their rent.
The wool from Scotland, which comes all to us now, went another way, viz.,
to France, for the Union was not then made, and yet we had too much at
home. Nor was the quantity brought from Ireland half so much as it is now.
Was all this difference from our own wearing, or not wearing the produce
of our own manufacture? How unaccountably stupid then are we to run still
retrograde to the public good of our country, and ruin our own commerce,
by rejecting our own manufacture, setting our people to furnish other
nations with cloths, and recommending the manufacture to other countries,
and rejecting them ourselves?
If the difference was small, and the clothing of our own people was a
thing of small moment, that it made no impression on the commerce, or the
manufacture in general, it might be said to be too little to take notice
of.
If our consumption at home is thus considerable, and the clothing of our
own people does consume the wool of many millions of sheep; if the silk
trade employs many thousands of families; if there is an absolute
necessity of working up if possible all the growth of our wool, as well of
Ireland as of England, or that else it would be run over to France, to the
encouragement of rival manufactures, and the ruin of our own; in a word,
if our own people, falling into a general use of our own manufacture,
would effectually do this, and their continuing to neglect it would
effectually throw our manufacture into convulsions, and stagnate the whole
trade of the kingdom; if our wearing foreign silk manufactures did
annually carry out 1,200,000_l._ sterling per annum for silks, to France
and Italy, and above 600,000_l._ per annum for the like to India, all in
spices, to the impoverishing our trade, by emptying us of all our ready
money, as well as starving our poor for want of employment.
Again, if these grievances were very much abated, and indeed almost
remedied by the several acts of parliament, first to prohibit East India
silks, then to lay high duties, equal to prohibition, upon French silks;
and, in the last place, an act to prohibit the use and wearing of printed
calicoes; I say, if these acts have gone so far in the retrieving the
dying condition of our woollen manufacture, and encouraging the silk
manufacture; that in the first, we have wrought up all the English growth
of wool, and that of Scotland too, which was never done before; and in the
last have improved so remarkably in the silk manufacture, that all that
vast sum of 1,800,000_l._ per annum, expended before in French and Indian
silks, is now turned into the pockets of our own poor, and kept all at
home, and the silks become a mere English manufacture as was before a
foreign.
If all this is true, as it is most certainly, what witchcraft must it be
that has seized upon the fancy of this nation? What spirit of blindness
and infatuation must have possessed us? that we are in all haste running
back into the old, stupid, and dull unthinking state, and growing fond of
anything, nay of everything that is injurious to our own commerce, and be
it as ruinous as it will to our own poor, and to our own manufactures;
nay, though we see our trade sick and languishing, and our poor starving
before our eyes; and know that we ourselves are the only cause of it, are
yet so obstinately and unalterable averse to our own manufacture, and fond
of novelties and trifles, that we will not wear our own goods, but will at
any hazard make use of things foreign to us, the labour and advantage of
strangers, pagans, negroes, or any kind of people, rather than our own.
Unhappy temper, unknown in any nation but ours! The wiser pagans and
Mahometans, natives of India, Persia, China, Japan, Siam, Pegu, act
otherwise; wherever we find any people in these parts, we find them
clothed with their own manufacture, whether of silk, cotton, herba, or of
whatever other materials they were made; nor to this day have our nicest
or finest manufactures, though perfectly new to them, (and novelties we
see take with us to a frenzy and distraction) touched their fancies, or so
much as tempted them to wear them; all our endeavours to persuade them
have been in vain; but with us, any new fancy, any far-fetched novelty,
however antick, however extravagant in price, nay the dearer the more
prevailing, presently touches our wandering fancy, and makes us cast off
our finest and most agreeable produce, the fruit of our own industry, and
the labour of our own poor, making a mode of the foreign gewgaw, let it be
as wild and barbarous as it will.
But I meet with an objection in my way here, which is insisted upon with
the utmost warmth; namely:--
Objection: you seem to acknowledge that the prohibition of India silks and
the duties upon French silks, have effectually answered the end as to
silks; and that the late act against the use and wearing of printed or
painted calicoes has likewise had its effect on the woollen manufacture.
There is nothing now left to support your complaint but the printed linen;
which, though it is become a general wear, yet is our own product and
growth, and the labour of our own poor; for the Scots and Irish, by whom
the linen is manufactured, are our own subjects, and ought as much to be
in our concern as any of the rest, and that linen is as much our own
manufacture as the silk and the wool.