with what warmth this very argument was urged to the parliament, and to
the public, by not the Scots and Irish only, but even by some of our own
people, possessed and persuaded by the other, at the time the act against
the printed calicoes was depending before the parliament; as if an
upstart, and in itself trifling manufacture, however increased by the
corruption of our people's humour and fancy, could be an equivalent to the
grand manufacture of wool in England, which is the fund of our whole
commerce, and has been the spring and fountain of our wealth and
prosperity for above three hundred years; a manufacture which employs
millions of our people, which has raised the wealth of the whole nation
from what it then was to what it now is; a manufacture that has made us
the greatest trading nation in the world, and upon which all our wealth
and commerce still depends.
I insist upon it that no novelty is to be encouraged among us to the
prejudice of this chief and main support of our country, let it be of what
kind it will; nor is it at all to the purpose to say such or such a
novelty is made at home, and is the work of our own people; it is to say
nothing at all, for we ought no more to set up particular manufactures to
the prejudice of the woollen trade in general, which is the grand product
of the whole nation, and on which our whole prosperity depends, than we
would spread an universal infection among us, on pretence that the
vegetable or plant from whence the destructive effluvia proceeded, was the
growth of our own land; or than we should publish the Alcoran and the most
heretical, blasphemous, or immodest books, to taint the morals and
principles of the people, on pretence that the paper and print were our
own manufactures.
I am for encouraging all manufactures that can be invented and set up
among us, and that may tend to the employment of the poor and improvement
of our produce; such things having a national tendency to raising the rent
of our lands, assisting the consumption of our growth, and, in a word,
increasing trade in general; I say I am for encouraging new manufactures
of all sorts, with this one exception only, namely, that they do not
interfere with, and tend to the prejudice of the woollen manufacture,
which is the main and essential manufacture of England.
But the woollen manufacture is the life and blood of the whole nation, the
soul of our trade, the top of all manufactures, and nothing can be erected
that either rivals it or any way lessens it or interferes with it, without
wounding us in the more noble and vital part, and, in effect, endangering
the whole.
To set up a manufacture of painted linen, which, touching the particular
pride and gay humour of the ordinary sort of people, intercepts the
woollen manufacture, which they would otherwise be clothed with, is so far
wounding and supplanting the woollen manufacture for a paltry trifle, and
though it is indeed in itself but a trifle, yet as the poorer sort of
people, the servants, and the wives and children of the farmers and
country people, and of the labouring poor, who wear this new fangle, are a
vast multitude, the wound strikes deeper into the quantity than most
people imagine, makes a large abatement of the consumption of wool,
lessening the labour of the poor manufacturers very considerably; and on
this account, I say, it ought not to be encouraged, though it be our own
manufacture.
Do we not, from this very principle, prohibit the planting tobacco in
England, though our own land would produce it? Do we not know there are
coals in Blackheath, Muzzle-hill, and other places, but that we must not
work them that we may not hurt the navigation? The reason is exactly the
same here.
This consideration is so pungent in itself, and so naturally touches every
Englishman that has the good of his country at heart, that one would think
there should be no occasion for an act of parliament to oblige them to it;
but they should be moved by a mere concern of mind, and generous endeavour
for the public prosperity, not to fall in with or encourage any new
project, any new custom or fashion, without first inquiring particularly
whether it would not be injurious to the prosperity of the main and grand
article of the English Commerce, the woollen manufacture.
Were this public spirit among us, we need fear no upstart manufacture
breaking in upon us, whether printed linen or anything else; for no people
of sense, having the good of their country at heart, would touch it, much
less make it a general fashion. But, as the Plan of English Commerce
observes, our people, the ladies especially, have such a passion for the
fashion, that they have been the greatest enemies to our woollen
manufacture; and I must add that this passion for the fashion of printed
linens at this time is a greater blow to the woollen manufacture of
England than all the prohibitions in Germany and Italy, of which we may
have formed such frightful ideas in our minds; or even than all the
imitation of our manufactures abroad, whether in France, or any other part
of Europe.
And yet, to conclude all,
How easy, how very easy is it for us to prevent it; which, by the way,
deserves a whole book by itself.
FINIS.
Transcriber's Notes:
Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.
The following misprints have been corrected:
superfluous "I" removed (page 12)
"of of" corrected to "of" (page 29)
"at at" corrected to "at" (page 31)