# The History of British Commerce/Volume 2/Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII.
FROM THE RESTORATION TO THE REVOLUTION.—A.D. 1600—1688.
In the interval between the Restoration and the Revolution the increase of our trade appears to have been both more considerable upon the whole, and more steady in its progress, than in any former period of the same length; and the same thing may probably be affirmed of the national industry in all its great branches. The hurricane of the civil war, disastrous as it may have been in its immediate operation, had yet put a new life into the air, the inspiration of which, on the return of a settled condition of things, was felt by our commerce and manufactures, as well as by all other parts of our social system; the very gap that remained to be filled up, in consequence of the partial suspension of mercantile and other industrial activity during the war, quickened that activity when the war was over; the government of the protectorate exerted itself to promote the trading interests of the country; and the impulse thus given continued to carry forward the spirit of enterprise after the Restoration, in a state of greater public security, and in circumstances otherwise much more favourable, than had existed previous to that event.
The best evidence of the regular growth and general prosperity of English commerce throughout the present period is afforded by the returns of the Custom-house duties, an account of which we have for its whole extent. From this account it appears that the produce of ​this branch of the public revenue from the 24th of July, 1660, to the 29th of September, 1661, was only 421,582l., or, for the twelve months, only about 361,356l.; that the annual average of the next four years, ending with Michaelmas Day, 1665, was about 509,774l.; of the next five, ending with 1670, about 475,018l. (here we may perceive the effect of the great plague and the fire of London, the returns being, for 1666 only 303,766l., for 1667 only 408,324l., but rising in 1668 to 626,998l.); of the next five years ending with 1675, 581,429l.; of the next five, ending with 1680, 640,231l. ; of the next five, ending with 1685, 722,933l.; and of the three remaining years, ending with Michaelmas, 1688, and all comprehended within the reign of James, about 815,874l., or fully double the receipts for the first year or two after the Restoration. The amount for the year ending 29th September, 1662, was 414,946l.; that for the year ending Michaelmas, 1687, was 884,955l. For the next year, the last of the present period, it was 781,987l.
The few notices that have been preserved of our general exports and imports during this period go to confirm the evidence of the progressive extension of the commerce of the country afforded by the foregoing account. We have seen that the entire value of the exports and imports in 1613 wis 4,628,586l., and in 1622, 4,939,751l. It is stated that in the year ending Michaelmas, 1663, the imports amounted to 4,016,019l., the exports to 2,022,812l.; and that in the year ending Michaelmas 1669, the imports were 4,196,139l., the exports 2,063,274l. The value of the exports and imports together, therefore, for the first of these years was 6,038,831l., and for the second 6,259,413l. The figures indicate a steady progress of mercantile activity and of national wealth, whether we fake the sums of the exports and imports at the four successive dates, as has just been done, or confine our view to the imports alone, as best marking the national power of expenditure or purchase. They were 2,141,283l. in 1614; 2,619,315l. in 1622; 4,016,019l. in 1663; and 4,196,139l. in 1669. ​The terms in which the great Dutch minister De Witt speaks of the hostility or rivalry to be apprehended ​from England, in his work entitled "The Interest of Holland," published in 1669, show the estimation of the commercial greatness of this country which was now prevalent on the continent; and the passage is also worth quoting from the sketch it gives of the rise and progress of our manufactures and trade. "When the compulsive laws of the Netherland Halls," he observes, "had first driven the cloth-weaving from the cities into our villages, and thence into England, and that, by the cruelty of the Duke d'Alva, the say-weaving went also after it, the English by degrees began to vend their manufactures throughout Europe: they became potent at sea, and no longer to depend on the Netherlands. Also, by that discovery of the inexpressibly rich cod-bank of Newfoundland, those of Bristol in particular made use of that advantage. Moreover, the long persecution of Puritans in England has occasioned the planting of many English colonies in America, by which they drive a very considerable foreign trade thither. So that this mighty island, united with Ireland under one king, seated in the midst of Europe, having a clear deep coast, with good ​havens and bays, in so narrow a sea that all foreign ships that sail either to the eastward or westward are necessitated, even in fair weather, to shun the dangerous French coast, and sail along that of England, and in stormy weather to run in and preserve their lives, ships, and merchandize in its bays—so that England now, by its conjunction with Scotland, being much increased in strength, as well by manufactures as by a great navigation, will in all respects be formidable to all Europe. For, according to the proverb, a master at sea is a master at land; and more especially a king of England, seeing he is able, both by whole fleets and private ships of war, at all times to seize on ships sailing by the coast—the westerly winds, which blow for most part of the year on this side of the tropic, giving the English great opportunities to sail out of their numerous bays and harbours at pleasure to infest our navigation."
Many particulars with regard to the state of the different branches of our foreign commerce about this time are to be collected from Sir Josiah Child's New Discourses on Trade, written in 1665 (at his country-house, "in the sickness-year," as he informs us), and first published in 1668. A second and greatly enlarged edition appeared in 1690. Child was an eminent London merchant, and his views on many subjects were in advance of his age: but there is certainly no soundness in the leading doctrine of the present work, which is, that the principal cause of national wealth is a low rate of interest established by law, the fact being, that the national rate of interest, being merely another name for the price of credit, is always dependent upon the state of the market of credit, that is to say, upon the supply of disposable capital and the demand for it by borrowers; and that all that the establishment of a legal rate of interest can do is in some degree to impede and disturb the course of the influences which regulate the natural rate, and which, if they were left to themselves, would determine the actual rate. In other words, a low rate of interest, instead of being, as Child imagined, a cause of national wealth, by which he meant the accumulation ​of capital, might more truly be said to be a consequence of such accumulation; for if the rate of profit, and consequently the demands of borrowers, should continue the same, the rate of interest would be brought down by the mere growth of disposable capital. But, notwithstanding this fundamental mistake of the book on a theoretical point, it may, from the position and opportunities of the author, be safely taken as a trustworthy authority in regard to most of the statements as to matters of fact contained in it. The branches of English commerce which Child speaks of as having been most extended in his time are the trade with Spain and Portugal and with the East Indies. In his preface he asserts that, since the year 1640, our exports of native commodities to the Peninsula had been more than trebled. He was himself a director of the East India Company, and he strenuously insists upon the great national profits and advantages of the trade with that region in opposition to the outcry raised against it, principally on the ground of its carrying a large balance of specie out of the country,—the simple test by which the common prejudice of the time at once decided whether any trade was profitable or the reverse. Child, without having very clear notions on the subject, is much inclined to qualify the vulgar doctrine on the balance of trade generally; but in this particular case his chief argument is, that, although the imports of the company were in great part paid for in money, the same money, or rather a larger sum, would otherwise have had to be paid to the Dutch for the same commodities. We should have had to buy from them the saltpetre necessary for the making of gunpowder, as well as our pepper and calicoes, for which they would have made us pay as dear as they did for nutmegs, cinnamon, cloves, and mace, of which they then had the monopoly; or, if we did not use calicoes, we should have been obliged to resort to foreign linens. The Company, he states, then employed from thirty-five to forty sail of the most war-like mercantile ships of the kingdom, with from sixty to a hundred men in each: and, besides supplying the country with saltpetre, pepper, indigo, calicoes, and ​several useful drugs, to the value of bwtween 150,000l. and 180,000l. yearly, for home consumption, procured us calicoes, printed stuffs, and other merchandise for our trades to Turkey, France, Spain, Italy, and Guinea; most of which trades, according to this author, could not then be carried on with any considerable advantage but for those supplies; "and those goods exported," he adds, "do produce in foreign parts, to be returned to England, six times the treasure in specie which the Company exports from England to India." In other branches of trade he represents the Dutch as going far a-head of us. A great trade was carried on by them to China and Japan, in which the English had no share. In the Russia trade, he says, the Dutch, the year before he wrote, had twenty-two great ships employed, and the English but one. In the Greenland whale-fishery the Dutch and Hamburghers had annually four or five hundred sail employed, while the English had only one ship the preceding year, and the year before that not one. The white herring fishery upon our own coasts was almost wholly in the hands of the Dutch; and so was the export of salt from Portugal and France. To the Baltic, or Eastland countries, the English had not now half so much trade as formerly; while the Dutch had ten times more than they used to have. The Norway trade, again, was in great part in the hands of the Danes, Holsteiners, &c.; our exportations to France Had greatly fallen off; and the English ships employed in the Newfoundland fishery had decreased from two hundred and fifty, which was their number in 1605, to eighty when Child wrote. In many of these instances, however, the country had probably only disengaged itself from an old trade, that it might enter into and carry on some other, which it found more to its advantage. Child admits that the general commerce of the country was never before either so extensive or so profitable. The Turkey, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese trades, by means partly of our Indian commodities, partly of our native wool, were more active and prosperous than at any former period. The trade with our American plantations was a new branch of ​commerce, of great and rapidly growing importance, which was wholly in our own hands. Accordingly, in proof of the general fact of the vast increase of the wealth of the country within the preceding twenty years, Child adduces the following particulars:—"First," he says, "we give generally now one-third more money with apprentices than we did twenty years before. Secondly, notwithstanding the decay of some, and the loss of other trades, yet, in the gross, we ship off now one-third more of our manufactures, and of our tin and lead, than we did twenty years ago. Thirdly, new-built houses in London yield twice the rent which they did before the conflagration in the year 1666; and houses immediately before that fire generally yielded one-fourth more rent than they did twenty years ago. Fourthly, the speedy and costly rebuilding, after that great fire, in London, is a convincing, and to a stranger an amazing, argument of the plenty and late increase of money in England. Fifthly, we have now more than double the number of merchants and shipping that we had twenty years ago. Sixthly, the course of our trade, from the increase of our money, is strangely altered within these twenty years; most payments from merchants and shop-keepers being now made with ready money, whereas formerly the course of our general trade ran at three, six, nine, and eighteen months' time." He admits that people complained, notwithstanding, very greatly of the scarcity of money; but "this humour of complaining," he replies with much truth, "proceeds from the frailty of our natures; it being natural for men to complain of the present, and to commend the times past." "And I can say, with truth," he adds, "upon my own memory, that men did complain as much of the scarcity of money ever since I knew the world as they do now:—nay, the very same persons who now complain of this and commend that time." Plenty or scarcity of money, indeed, has no necessary connexion with a prosperous condition of commerce, or the reverse, any more than plenty or scarcity of leather or of hats. In so far as the fact is general, it is merely a consequence of the existing condition of the ​market of money, which is affected by the same causes that produce fluctuations in all other markets, and also by some peculiar to itself, arising out of the financial institutions and arrangements of different countries. With regard, again, to the scarcity of money felt by individuals, that is a complaint likely, for obvious reasons, to be just as rife in a time of active and profitable commercial speculation, when every man able to procure the command of capital can turn it to good account, as in a stagnant or decaying state of trade, when capital can be employed with comparatively little advantage.
Some further information in proof of the continued increase of the trade and wealth of the kingdom is supplied to us at a date a few years later by another eminent authority, Sir William Petty, in his " Political Arithmetic," first published in 1676. This writer's statements and conclusions with regard to the progress of the national prosperity for the preceding forty years strikingly coincide with and confirm those of Sir Josiah Child. He observes that in these forty years the taxes and other public pecuniary levies in the three kingdoms had been much greater than they ever were before, and yet they had undeniably all three gradually increased in wealth and strength within that space. The number of houses in London was double what it was forty years before; and there had also been a great increase of houses at Newcastle, Yarmouth, Norwich, Exeter, Portsmouth, and Cowes; as also in Ireland, in the towns of Dublin, Kinsale, Coleraine, and Londonderry. Then, with respect to shipping, the royal navy was now double or quadruple what it had been forty years ago; and the coal-shipping of Newcastle now amounted to about 80,000 tons, or probably four times what it then was, seeing that London did not then contain more than half the inhabitants it now did; while the use of coals was also doubled,—"they being heretofore," says Sir William, "seldom used in chambers, as they now are, nor were there so many bricks burnt with them as of late, nor did the country on both sides the Thames make use of them as now." "Above 40,000 ton of shipping," he ​continues, "are now employed in the Guinea and American trade, which trade in those days was inconsiderable. The quantity of wines imported was not then near so great as now. And, in short, the customs did not then yield one-third of the present value. The number and splendour of coaches, equipages, and household furniture have much increased since that period. The postage of letters is increased from one to twenty. And his majesty's revenue is now trebled." The exact amount specified in some of these necessarily in part conjectural estimates may not be entitled to absolute confidence; but there can be no question that the general bearing of the facts is correctly given.
But the most comprehensive view of the progress of the commerce and wealth of England during the present period is that given by Dr. Davenant in one of his Discourses on Trade. Davenant, we may premise, has not the clearest notions on some of the fundamental points of political economy; but he has sense to perceive the absurdity of the principles advanced by some writers of his time, whose assertions, indeed, might well have startled the dullest understanding. Mr. Pollexfen, to a publication by whom Davenant particularly addresses himself, had actually maintained gold and silver to be "the only things that deserve the name of treasure, or the riches of a nation;" and to this Davenant answers, very well, "that, in truth, money is at bottom no more than the counters with which men, in their dealings, have been accustomed to reckon;" adding, "When a country begins to thrive by trade, it must not be imagined that the increase and profit is presently converted into coin or bullion; and a great ready cash is not the only sign of a thriving people, but their growing wealthy is to be discerned by other symptoms." Just before, however, ​his partial entanglement in the prejudices of his age has led liim to admit that the precious metals, though not the spring and original, are yet the measure, of trade in all nations; which, except in a very qualified sense indeed, and in reference to mere convenience of calculation, they really no more are than any other species of merchandise. Pollexfen also contended that there had been a regular annual decrease of the wealth and trade of the country ever since the year 1666; a position taken up about this time by various popular writers, among others by the author of a famous discourse entitled "Britannia Languens," published in 1680, who, by not only confining his view to one side of the question, but by looking at that through the medium of a false theory, contrived to make out to his own satisfaction, and doubtless also to that of many of his readers, that the country had been advancing towards ruin at a round pace for many years. The main argument of this writer is, simply, that there had been less money coined from 1657 to 1675 than in any former period of the same length from the beginning of the century,—a fact which, if it could have been ever so conclusively established, had no more to do with the subject of debate than a similar calculation of the comparative quantities of rain that had fallen in the several periods fixed upon would have had. This test, as applied by the author of Britannia Languens, would have proved a rapid decline of national prosperity indeed; for, whereas, according to his showing, the value of gold and silver coined from 1600 to 1619 had been nearly 4,800,000l.; and from 1619 to 1638, 6,900,000l.; and from 1638 to 1657 above 7,700,000l.; the amount from 1657 to 1675 had only been about 2,239,000l.; and even of that he observes, about a million had been partly harp and cross money, partly old money recoined. So that, by this measure, the trade of these last eighteen years must have fallen to a fourth or a fifth of what it had been before! This was a "languishing" state of things truly. Davenant first shows, by the increase in the value of landed property, from twelve years' purchase in ancient times, to fourteen, ​sixteen, and in the best counties eighteen and twenty years' purchase about 1666, and by the great increase in the produce of the taxes in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. and in the time of the Commonwealth, that the country must have been growing rich from the beginning of the century up to that year. So much, perhaps, would not be disputed by his opponents. But he contends, on the same or similar grounds, that the same progress continued to go on. and in an augmented ratio, after 1666. Since that year, he affirms, the price of land in the best counties had risen from twenty to twenty-six and twenty-seven years' purchase; and elsewhere from fourteen years' purchase to seventeen or eighteen. "From that year," he adds, "there were apparently more improvements made in land than had been known in fifty years before, by enclosing, manuring, taking in of waste ground, and meliorating what was poor or barren; and yet great improvements had been made in the crown-lands during the civil war." He calculates, from the best observations he has been able to make, "by comparing the ancient subsidies with the present aids and taxes on land," that the general rental of England for land, houses, mines, &c. before the country became considerable by trade,—that is to say, about the year 1600,—did not exceed six millions per annum; whereas, in 1688, he takes the rental of the kingdom to have been about fourteen millions. So that, in 1600, the whole land of England at twelve years' purchase was only worth 72,000,000l.; and in 1688, at eighteen years' purchase, was worth 252,000,000l., or three and a-half times as much as before. As for the mercantile shipping of the kingdom, old and experienced merchants all agreed that its tonnage in 1688 was nearly double what it had been in 1666; and it appeared by authentic accounts that the royal navy, which in May, 1666, amounted only to 62,594 tons, was grown to 101,032 tons in December, 1688. We pass over a long calculation and argument about the amount of gold and silver coined at different periods, as tending very little to elucidate the matter in hand. The statement then proceeds:—"As to plate, it may be safely ​affirmed that there was more wrought for use in families from 1666 to 1688 than had been fabricated in two hundred years before......As to the common people, there is no country in the world where the inferior rank of men are better clothed and fed, and more at their ease, than in this kingdom, nor, consequently, where they propagate faster. As to buildings, during that time not only many stately edifices, both public and private, have been erected, but farm-houses have been kept up; and, besides, from the books of hearth-money, and for other reasons, it appears that of smaller tenements, from 1666 to 1688, there have been about 70,000 new foundations laid, of which the country has not wanted its proper proportion." In 1666 the customs, according to Davenant, were farmed for no more than 390,000l.; but from Michaelmas, 1671, to Michaelmas, 1688, they had yielded to the crown an average annual return of 555,750l. This statement, it will be observed, does not agree with the account given in a preceding page on the authority of Chalmers; but the fact of the increase in the produce of the customs is equally attested by both. "Upon a general view and inspection into the kingdom's state," Davenant calculates that the value of the whole stock of England, by which he explains himself as meaning "the coined silver, coined gold, bullion, wrought plate, rings, &c.; jewels, furniture, apparel, &c.; stock for trade, consumption, &c.; and the live stock in cattle, &c.,"—that is, apparently, everything in the kingdom beside what the lawyers call real property,—was in 1600 about 17,000,000l.; that in thirty years it nearly doubled, and in 1630 was about 28,000,000l.; that in the next thirty years it fully doubled, and in 1660 was about 56,000,000l.; and that from 1660 to 1688 it above half doubled, and was in the last-mentioned year about 88,000,000l. Of this calculation he maintains that "every article may be made out and justified by as plain demonstration as anything of this nature is capable of." The stock of the kingdom, he thinks, would have fully doubled itself in the last period as well as in those of the same length that preceded, had it not been that "a stop was put to our career by the great plague of 1665; by the fire ​of London, which consumed a great part of the present stock; by our wars abroad; and by our growing luxuries, which drew to other uses what formerly was left wholly to run in the channel of trade." "However," he adds, "when the kingdom had recovered these losses and shocks, which we have reason to think it had perfectly done about 1680 (trade augmenting all the while, and becoming more extensive), its wealth grew faster towards the latter end of this last era of thirty years than before: so that there is more than probable room to conjecture that about 1688 it came to reach the annual increase of two millions." There is much, of course, that is merely theoretical, and far enough from conclusive, in these speculations; but they are curious at least, if not perfectly convincing, and may be admitted to have a general, though not an exact and absolute, truth.
Of the measures affecting commerce that were passed by the legislature in the present period, the most important was the statute of the 12 Car. II. c. 18, entitled an Act for the Encouraging and Encreasing of Shipping and Navigation, and popularly known by the name of the Navigation Act. This famous statute was in the main merely a re-enactment of the statute passed by the Rump Parliament in October, 1651; the principle of which was, as explained in the last Chapter, to confine absolutely to English ships the carriage of all goods imported into any part of the dominions of England from Asia, Africa, or America; and to English ships, or ships of the particular country from which the goods were imported, the carriage of all goods brought into England from any other country of Europe. In the new Act, the latter and most important provision was so far modified as to be confined to goods imported from Russia and Turkey, and to certain goods only from other European countries. But this was in reality a very slight mitigation of the restriction; for the articles in question comprised all the most important English imports, such as timber, salt, pitch, tar, hemp, raisins, figs, oils, grain, wine, spirits, &c.; so that it was scarcely possible that a full cargo of goods could be made up for England in any country of Europe without some ​of the articles which could thus only be imported in English or native bottoms. On the other hand, the restrictions of the act of 1651, as to importation into England, were now made equally applicable to the exportation of goods from England to other European countries. A Navigation Act similar to the English one was passed by the parliament of Scotland the following year; and the English statute was altered, and in some respects made still more rigid or more comprehensive, by subsequent acts, of which it is not necessary to give any particular account. We may merely mention that, by a clause in an act for regulating the customs, passed in 1662 (13 and 14 Car. II. c. 11, s. 23), it was enacted that no sort of wines other than Rhenish, no sort of spicery, grocery, tobacco, potashes, pitch, tar, salt, resin, deal-boards, fir, timber, or olive oil, should be imported from the Netherlands or Germany, "upon any pretence whatsoever, in any sort of ships or vessels whatsoever, upon penalty of the loss of all the said goods, as also of the ships and furniture."
​The navigation laws are admitted to have been framed in a spirit of violent animosity against the Dutch, and to have had for one of their principal objects the depression of the mercantile superiority of that people, then in possession of the greater part of the carrying trade of the world. The Dutch were, in fact, deprived by these acts of so much of their carrying trade as consisted in importing goods to England and in exporting to other countries English home and colonial produce and manufactures; and the greater part of what they thus lost the English ship-owner gained. The English consumer,—in other words, the English public,—was, in a pecuniary sense at least, a gainer of nothing, but a considerable loser: the monopoly of the ship-owner was, of course, a tax upon the rest of the community. This tax, however, it has been said, was paid for the essential object of the national defence,—for the creation and maintenance of a naval strength which the country would not otherwise have possessed. The exact operation of indirect methods of procedure, such as the policy of the navigation laws is here assumed to be, will always afford matter for difference of opinion, and hardly admits of being satisfactorily determined; but it is certain that, however much commendation these laws have received in later times, the greatest doubts were entertained as to any public benefit being attributable to them by some of the ablest observers who had an opportunity of witnessing the effects they produced when they first came to change the natural course in which the commerce of the country was previously proceeding. Roger Coke, in his "Treatise on Trade," published in 1671, maintains that, by lessening the resort of strangers to our ports, they had had a most injurious effect on our commerce: he states that, within two years after the passing of the first partial Navigation Act in 1650 (the progenitor of that of the following year), we had lost through their operation the greater part of our Baltic and Greenland trades. Sir Josiah Child, although decidedly approving of the principle of the Navigation Act, corroborates Coke in so far by admitting, in his "Treatise on Trade," published in 1698, that "the English shipping ​employed in the Eastland and Baltic trades had decreased two-thirds since the passing of the act, and that the foreign shipping employed in these trades had increased in a like proportion. It is plain, indeed, that this law, by raising their freights in the home trade, of which it gave them a monopoly, must have disabled English ship-owners from competing with foreigners in every other trade of which they had not a like exclusive command.
The most remarkable outbreak in the course of this period of the old commercial jealousy which, in contradiction to the first principle of commerce, used, in its fits of fury, to be continually striving to exclude from the kingdom the productions of foreign countries, in the notion of thereby putting down their commercial rivalry, was the entire prohibition of trade with France in 1678. On this occasion, indeed, national hatred and religious excitement lent their aid to strengthen and envenom the feelings arising from rivalry in trade, for it was the time of the popular ferment about the designs of France, out of which sprung immediately afterwards the wild delusion of the popish plot; but the chief motive of the prohibition, nevertheless, was undoubtedly the prevalent notion that the country was suffering an annual pecuniary loss to a vast amount by the balance of trade, as it was called, being turned against us in consequence of our large importation of French commodities. The act of parliament (the 29 and 30 Car. II. c. 1, s. 20) declares that it had been by long experience found that the importing of French wines, brandy, linen, silk, salt, paper, and other commodities of the growth, product, or manufacture of the territories and dominions of the French king had much exhausted the treasure of this nation, lessened the value of the native commodities and manufactures thereof, and caused great detriment to the kingdom in general. It therefore proceeded to enact that, for three years from the 20th of March, 1677 (1678), and to the end of the next session of parliament, no French wine, vinegar, ​brandy, linen, cloth, silks, salt, grapes, or other product or manufacture of the dominions of the king of France should be imported in any sort of vessel whatsoever into any part of England, and that the importation or vending of any such French goods should be adjudged "to be a common nuisance to this kingdom in general, and to all his majesty's subjects thereof." The adherents of the balance-of-trade theory at the time, and long afterwards, all looked upon this prohibition as a most wise and salutary act of national policy, and were in the habit of referring with much triumph to its effects in proof of the correctness of their views. Indeed they had long been clamouring for something of the kind before the measure was adopted by the legislature. The House of Commons which met in the latter part of the year 1675 had, upon an examination of the trade between England and France, come to a resolution that the former country was annually a loser in the said trade to the amount of a million sterling, and had thereupon ordered a bill to be brought in to put a stop to it, as was actually done two years after. The following are the terms in which Anderson, writing nearly a century after 1678, speaks of the act then passed against commerce with France: "The immense importation into England of French wares of various kinds gave just umbrage to all wise people, as occasioning a vast annual loss in point of the general balance of England's trade; some say, to at least one million sterling, others to considerably more; because, whilst we were wantonly and without measure importing and using the produce and manufactures of France, the wiser French ministry were from time to time laying heavier duties upon the English manufactures and produce....Hereby the English foreign trade in general languished, rents fell, and all ranks began sensibly to feel its bad effects. Yet they at first imputed this misfortune to a wrong cause, which made the merchants and traders petition the parliament against the East India and Levant Companies. In conclusion, they discovered the true cause; whereupon they made such earnest application to the parliament as influenced the House of Commons to come to a vote, that the trade ​with France was detrimental to the kingdom....It was, indeed, more than time for England to interpose and save the almost expiring liberties of Europe, whilst at the same time she put some stop to an inundation of French wines, brandies, silks, linen, paper, salt, and an innumerable variety of frippery, millinery, and haberdashery wares, toys, &c.; which prohibition, and that of the wear of East India manufactures, brought the general balance greatly in our favour in the course of twenty years. The authors of this time say that, until after this prohibition, the annual exports of England, on an average, did not exceed three millions sterling; but that, in about twenty years after, the exports had gradually increased to near seven millions yearly, which vast increase was principally occasioned by the great increase and exportation of our own woollen, silk, linen, iron, and other manufactures, since the prohibition of commerce with France; and partly also to the prohibition, some years after enacted, of the wear in England of East India manufactures; and likewise in part to the enlarged demand from our own American colonies of all sorts of manufactures and necessaries." As Charles II. never again assembled a parliament after the 20th of March, 1681, the act prohibiting the importation of French merchandize remained in force till it was repealed in the beginning of the next reign by the act 1 Jac. II. c. 5. "Where-upon," says Anderson, "ensued an inundation of French commodities, to the value of about four millions sterling, within the compass of less than three years' time, whereby all the. evils formerly complained of were renewed, so that the nation would have been soon beggared, had it not been for the happy Revolution in the year 1688, when all commerce with France was effectually barred." The proof of a nation being on the road to beggary, which is derived from its purchasing every year between one and two millions' worth of commodities from another country, is not particularly convincing. But, as usual in cases of this kind, even the facts as to this matter appear to have been grossly misstated. Davenant, in his First Report to the Commissioners of Public Accounts, sensibly ​observes,—"It has never been popular to lay down that England was not a great loser by the French trade; but, in inquiries of this kind, truth should be more hunted after than popularity, and I shall endeavour to set this matter in as true a light as the nature of it will admit of, and which lies so obscure for want of knowing right of matter of fact. As to the importations and exportations of commodities between the respective kingdoms, so far is beyond contradiction, that all the while England flourished and grew rich by an extended traffic (which was by Queen Elizabeth's reign down to the year 1640 the two countries did not load one another with prohibitions of, or high duties upon, each other's product or manufactures, which that country would certainly have done that had found itself any considerable loser by their mutual dealings, which must have been seen and felt in so long a tract of time; so that during this space it is rather to be presumed both kingdoms reciprocally found their account by the commerce that was between them. During the afore-mentioned period the strength and power of France was not become formidable, and the prodigious growth of the House of Austria was what employed all our fears; but, as you know, about the year 1660, the face of affairs in Europe changed, the Spanish monarchy was declined, and France became the rising empire. And it rose so fast as to beget just apprehensions to England for our future safety. In the meanwhile several good patriots, perceiving the court then fatally running into French interests and measures, and finding it would be difficult to engage the people (newly come out of a civil war) to follow and join with them in more national councils by speculations merely political concerning the progress of the French arms and power, they thought the best course to awaken Englishmen was to alarm them about the danger they were in to lose their trade, and for this reason nothing was so common as to cry that England was undone by the prodigious overbalance the French had upon us." To prove this, divers estimates were drawn up and laid before the king, the committees of council, and the House of Commons. With regard to these ​estimates, Davenant remarks, in the first place, that, whatever may have been the case as to the trade with France, it is evident, beyond all dispute, that, from the Restoration to the Revolution, our trade with the whole world must have been a most gainful one, even in the sense of those who will admit nothing but an overbalance of gold and silver to be a gain in commerce, seeing that, in that space of time, there was actually coined at the Mint, as appears from the Mint-rolls, above six millions of gold and above four millions of silver. "If England," he proceeds, "had suffered such a drain as the loss of a million per annum by its dealings with one single country, there could not have been such an immense coinage in those years, nor could the bullion we received from Spain, returned as the overbalance of the trade we had with the Spaniards, have answered and made good such a constant issue: from whence follows, that this balance against us of a million yearly, which has been asserted in several books, and in memorials laid before the king and council, and both Houses of Parliament, must have been chimerical, for bye-ends advanced by some, and ignorantly followed by others." He then states various facts which go to show at least that considerable exaggeration had been used in making up the accounts which appeared to prove so great a balance of imports from France; and, on the whole, be comes to the conclusion, that, if the goods sent from England to France, and those brought from France to England, had been fairly valued, there would be found to have been no considerable difference between the money amount of the one and of the other. But, after all, he goes on to remark, the question remains, "how far the excess between the exports and imports may be deemed a certain rule, whereby to judge whether a country gets or loses by its trade?" And upon this point he adduces some startling facts. Both in 1663 and 1669, as we have already seen, the imports very greatly exceeded the exports on our trade with the whole world; yet in both those years it was not to be disputed by any man in his senses that we carried on a thriving traffic on the whole. On the other hand, in five more recent years, ​for which he presents from the Custom-house books an abstract of the exports and imports between England and all foreign countries, it appears that the exports regularly exceeded the imports in a very high degree; "and I believe," he says, "it has been the same from 1688 to the time the books of my office began: however, it can hardly be affirmed, and the merchants upon the Exchange will scarce agree, that during this time England has carried on a profitable trade; at least there appears no over-balance returned to us in bullion, to set the Mint at work; contrariwise, our specie of gold and silver, since that time, is by degrees visibly diminished." In fine, from these and various other considerations, Davenant is led to have strong doubts whether the popular notion of England having been a loser in her trade with France from the Restoration to the Revolution, or to the passing of the prohibitory act in 1678, be not a mere popular delusion. "Great Britain at that time," he observes, "had no marks upon it of a nation declining in wealth and commerce: the interest of money was low, the species of gold and silver abounded; the middle ranks of men had a large proportion of plate among them; after a general conflagration the city was rebuilt in a few years, magnificent public edifices were erected, the farm-houses everywhere were in good repair." He adds that the tonnage of mercantile shipping infinitely exceeded what it was when he wrote, in 1711; and that even at the low duties then in force the customs for the year ending Michaelmas, 1677, produced no less than 828,200l. All this he justly considers to have been the fruits and the evidence, not of a decaying, but of a prosperous and extending, trade.
In 1685 occurred an event which was followed by important consequences to the industry both of France and England, the flight from the former country of a large portion of its manufacturing population on the revocation of the law passed by Henry IV. in 1598 for the protection of his Protestant subjects, called, from the place of its ​promulgation, the Edict of Nantes. The number of persons who withdrew from the dominions of the French king upon this occasion is supposed by the lowest estimate to have exceeded three hundred thousand; but, including all who during some years before had fled from the coming storm, as well as those whom it swept before it when it actually broke out, they have been reckoned to amount to eight hundred thousand, or even to a million. Of the mere working people the greater part settled in Prussia; whither, Frederick II. informs us, in his Memoirs of the House of Brandenburg, they brought all sorts of manufactures which the country before wanted, establishing, under the protection of the Elector Frederick William, the fabrication of cloth, serges, stuffs, druggets, crapes, caps, stockings, hats, and also the dying of all sorts of colours; "Berlin," it is added, "now had goldsmiths, jewellers, watchmakers, and carvers; and such as were settled in the open country planted tobacco, and a variety of fruits and pulse." But those of a superior class or who had more money, generally took refuge in England and Holland. Voltaire, who makes the entire number that left France in three years about five hundred thousand, says, "An entire suburb of London was peopled with French manufacturers of silk: others carried thither the art of making crystal in perfection, which has been since this epoch lost in France." Besides Spitalfields, the suburb alluded to by Voltaire, some thousands of them settled in Soho and St. Giles's; and, besides those who took up their abode in London, many were dispersed in various parts of the country. "It may seem somewhat strange," Anderson writes, "that more of them did not settle in England, considering the general liberty of this free nation; yet, through the too general and impolitic aversion of the English to all strangers, even though suffering for the Protestant religion, and their monopolizing corporation cities and towns, and, on the other hand, the great immunities, &c., allowed them in Holland, Switzerland, Germany, and Prussia, we are not to wonder that not above fifty thousand of them did actually settle in England; where, ​instead of doing us hurt, they have proved a great and manifest blessing by improving some of our ancient arts and manufactures, and likewise by introducing various new ones. Others, however, think that in all there were settled in Great Britain and Ireland at least seventy thousand of those refugees....As many of those refugees were eminent merchants, and did undoubtedly bring along with them much money and effects, I have seen a computation on the lowest supposition of only fifty thousand of those people coming to Great Britain, and that, one with another, they brought sixty pounds each in money or effects; so that they added three millions sterling to the wealth of Britain." He adds, that even in King James the Second's reign large collections were made for the refugees; and that at the Revolution the yearly sum of 15,000l. was settled on such of them as either were persons of quality, or were, through age or other causes, unable to support themselves. To these French refugees, "England," he observes in conclusion, "owes the improvement of several of its manufactures of slight woollen stuffs,—of silk, linen, paper, glass, hats (the two last since brought to the utmost perfection by us). The silks called alamodes and lustrings were entirely owing to them; also brocades, satins, black and coloured mantuas, black paduasoys, ducapes, watered tabbies, black velvets; also watches, cutlery-ware, clocks, jacks, locks, surgeons' instruments, hardware, toys, &c."
The reduction of the legal rate of interest to six per cent., which had been made by the Rump Parliament in 1651, was confirmed after the Restoration by the act 12 Car. II. c. 13, entitled, An Act for restraining the taking of excessive Usury. "The abatement of interest from ten in the hundred in former times," the preamble declares, "hath been found, by notable experience, beneficial to the advancement of trade and improvement of lands by good husbandry, with many other considerable advantages to this nation, especially the reducing of it to a nearer proportion with foreign states with whom we ​traffic; and in fresh memory the like fall from eight to six in the hundred by a late constant practice hath found the like success, to the general contentment of this nation, as is visible by several improvements." In Scotland the reduction was not made till 1672. To the reduction of interest to six per cent. Sir Josiah Child, in his "Brief Observations concerning Trade and Interest of Money," first published in 1688, ascribes the most important effects in the augmentation of the national wealth; and, although his notion upon this point is a mere fallacy, some of the facts which he mentions, and with regard to which his authority is unquestionable, however much he may be mistaken as to the cause to which he would trace them, are curious. When he wrote, he asserts, there were more men to be found upon the Exchange of London worth ten thousand pounds than were worth one thousand when the reduction was first made by the Rump parliament. He adds, that five hundred pounds with a daughter, sixty years before, was esteemed a larger portion than two thousand pounds now; that gentlewomen in former times esteemed themselves well clothed in a serge gown, which a chambermaid would now be ashamed to be seen in; and that, besides the great increase of rich clothes, plate, jewels, and household furniture, there were a hundred coaches now kept for one that was kept formerly.
Of the great chartered associations which in earlier times used to monopolize the commerce to different foreign regions, the East India Company is the only one which demands any particular notice in the present period. While the others, as trade outgrew the need of such shelter and propping, were gradually losing their exclusive privileges and sinking towards decrepitude and insignificance, it was fast surmounting the impediments of various kinds, both abroad and at home, that had hitherto entangled its progress, and becoming every day more prosperous and more firmly established. Although the charter the Company had obtained from Cromwell in 1657 was not yet expired, it was thought advisable, in the change that all things had undergone, to get a new one from the restored king; and they were accordingly ​reincorporated by Charles, on the 3rd of April, 1661, with a full confirmation of all their ancient privileges, and the important additional rights:—1. Of erecting so many forts as they pleased in India and St. Helena, and appointing judges to try both civil and criminal causes; 2. Of making peace and war with any people not Christians, within the limits of their trade; 3. Of seizing all English subjects found without their licence in India or in the Indian seas, and sending them home to England. In 1669 the island of Bombay, which Charles had received from Portugal as part of the dower of Queen Catherine, was made over by him to the Company, to be held by them "in free and common soccage, as of the manor of East Greenwich, at an annual rent of ten pounds." The trade of the Company now became so lucrative, that in 1676 they were enabled to double their capital out of their accumulated profits; on which the market price of their stock immediately rose to 245 per cent. A view of the state of the commerce with India about this time is very fully given in a publication which appeared in 1677 entitled "The East India Trade a most profitable Trade to this Kingdom," and which is supposed to have been written by Sir Josiah Child. The Company, this writer states, then employed from thirty to thirty-five ships, running from 300 to 600 tons burden, and carrying, or capable of carrying, from forty to sixty or seventy guns each. Their annual exports amounted to about 430,000l. ; namely, 320,000l. in bullion, and the remainder in cloth and other goods. Their imports in calico, pepper, saltpetre, indigo, silk (raw and wrought), drugs, &c., had in the year 1674-5 produced 860,000l., and often yielded a much larger sum. Besides this, the private trade allowed by the Company to owners of ships, commanders, and seamen, as well as to their own factors, for diamonds, pearls, musk, ambergris, &c., occasioned an annual export of from 80,000l. to 100,000l. in bullion, and about 40,000l. or 50,000l. in goods, and brought returns to the amount of 250,000l. or 300,000l. Of the 110,000l. worth of goods exported by the Company, 40,000l. or 50,000l. worth ​consisted of foreign commodities, the rest of home produce and manufactures, such as drapery, tin, and lead. Of the imports, there might be consumed in England, pepper to the value of 6,000l.; saltpetre to that of 30,000l.; silks (raw and manufactured) to that of 30,000l.; calicoes to that of 160,000l.; and indigo and other drugs to that of from 10,000l. to 15,000l. "All the rest of the returns abovementioned," the statement proceeds, "amounting to 630,000l. value, are transported to foreign markets, as is also most part of the private trade. The pepper I reckon at 8d. per pound weight, so necessary a spice for all people, which formerly cost us 3s. 4d. per pound, being nowhere to be had but in India; and, were we obliged to have it from the Dutch, they would probably raise it as high as they do their other spices; yet, supposing it so low as 1s. 4d. per pound, it would be a further annual expense of 6000l. to the nation. Saltpetre is of that absolute necessity, that without it we should be like the Israelites under the bondage of the Philistines—without the means of defending ourselves. Possibly, even if we had no Indian trade, we might in time of peace, purchase it, though it would cost us double what it now does. But in case of war where could we have sufficient? Not, surely from our enemies. Or, would our gentlemen, citizens, and farmers be willing to have their cellars and rooms dug up as in King Charles I.'s reign, and be deprived of freedom in their own houses, exposed and laid open to saltpetre-men? Which method would be, besides, by no means equal to the affording us the necessary supplies. Raw silk we might possibly be supplied with from other parts, though not so cheap as from India. And India wrought silks serve us instead of so much Italian or French silks, which would cost us almost treble the price of Indian silks, to the kingdom's loss of above 20,000l. yearly. Calicoes serve instead of the like quantity of French, Dutch, and Flemish linen, which would cost us thrice as much; hereby 200,000l. or 300,000l. is yearly saved to the nation. And, if the linen manufacture were settled in Ireland so as to supply ​England, our calicoes might be transported to foreign markets." At this time the linen manulactured at home probably did not supply a thousandth part of the consumption. Female dresses had been wont to be principally made of French cambrics, French and Silesia lawns, and other flaxen fabrics of Flanders and Germany; but these fabrics were now beginning to be pretty generally supplanted by the muslins of India. Plain calicoes were also now brought in considerable quantities from India to be printed in England, in imitation of the Indian printed chintzes, the bringing home of which was at last prohibited altogether, for the better encouragement of the English printing business.
It was during the present period that Tea was first brought to England. Known from the remotest antiquity in China and Japan, tea is mentioned under the name of sah as the common beverage of the Chinese by the Arabian merchant Soliman, who wrote an account of his travels in the East in the year 850. The earliest European writers, however, by whom it is mentioned, are some of the Jesuit missionaries who visited China and Japan a little before the middle of the sixteenth century, and who describe it in their letters under the names of cha, cia, tchia, and thee. It appears to have been first imported, at least in any quantity, by the Dutch East India Company soon after the beginning of the seventeenth century; and by them the small demand of Europe during the greater part of that century was principally supplied. Tea is not enumerated, any more than coffee or chocolate, in the table of rates appended to the tonnage and poundage or customs' dues act passed by the Convention Parliament in 1660 (12 Car. II. c. 4) ; but it is mentioned in the act passed in the same year imposing an excise upon beer, ale, and other liquors (12 Car. II. c. 23); two of the rates or duties there enacted being, "For every gallon of coffee made and sold, to be paid by the maker, 4d.;" and, "For every gallon of chocolate, sherbet, and tea, made and sold, to be paid by the maker thereof, 8d." And the tax upon tea continued to be an excise duty, that is to ​say, to be levied not upon the imported commodity, but upon the liquor made and sold, till the Revolution. At this time the beverage was only just beginning to be known in England. Pepys, in his Diary, under date of September 25th, 1661, records, "I sent for a cup of tea (a Chinese drink), of which I had never drank before." The poet Waller has some lines on the birthday of Queen Catherine, which he entitles, "Of Tea commended by her Majesty;" and from which it should seem that her example had brought the new drink into fashionable use, if, indeed, the poet is not to be understood as, (by a courtly compliment not strictly true) attributing to her majesty, who came over here in 1662, the introduction of it for the first time into the country:—
   "The best of queens and best of herbs we owe
   To that bold nation, which the way did show To the fair region where the sun does rise, Whose rich productions we so justly prize. The muse's friend, Tea, does our fancy aid; Repress those vapours which the head invade; And keeps that palace of the soul serene, Fit on her birthday to salute the queen."
For some time after this, however, the quantity of tea brought to Europe continued to be very small. In 1664 the East India Company could only procure two pounds and two ounces, which cost them forty shillings a pound, when they wanted to make a present of some rarities to the king; and in 1666 they had to pay fifty shillings a pound for twenty-two pounds and three-quarters, which they in like manner presented to his majesty. Their own first importation was in 1669, when they received two canisters containing 143½ pounds from Bantam, which they did not sell, but partly gave away in presents, partly used in the House for the refreshment of the committees. After this, however, they gradually increased their importations, though still making their purchases generally at second-hand in Madras and Surat, having only once gone for the article to the port of Amoy in China, till, in the year 1678, they brought home 4713 pounds; a ​quantity so large that it glutted the market, so that in the six following years their importations in all amounted only to 410 pounds. It was not, therefore, till after the Revolution that the consumption of tea began to be at all general in this country.
St. Helena, the possession of which had been confirmed to the Company by their last charter, was taken by the Dutch in 1665, but was regained in 1672, and the following year re-granted by the Crown to the Company for ever. On the 5th of October, 1677, they also obtained a new charter from Charles II., empowering them, among other privileges, to coin money at Bombay and their other possessions in India. In 1680 the first notice occurs of a ship sent by the Company to China. In 1683 they lost their factory at Bantam in the island of Java, one of their oldest and best establishments, in consequence of having taken the unsuccessful side in a quarrel between the king and his son, the latter of whom was assisted by the Dutch, who, on their victory, obtained possession of the factory, which, with the exception of a few years during the last war, they have continued to hold ever since. On this the English established a new factory, which they fortified at a great expense, at Bencoolen, near the southern extremity of Sumatra,—by this means preserving the pepper trade, which would otherwise have all fallen into the hands of the Dutch. On the 3rd of August, 1683, Charles II. granted the Company another charter, conferring upon them some new powers, in particular the right of exercising martial law in their garrisons in India, and of establishing courts for the trial of crimes committed on the seas within the limits of their trade. They afterwards obtained another charter, still further enlarging their privileges, from James II., on the 12th of April, 1686. In India, in the meanwhile, they had become involved in a quarrel with the Nabob of Bengal, within whose government they had had a flourishing factory at Hooghly, a town on the west branch of the Ganges, and the chief port of the province; the result of which was, ​after some fighting, that they removed in 1687 from Hooghly to Sootanutty, a place twenty-three miles lower down, and situated on the opposite or cast bank of the same river. From this village has sprung the magnificent modern capital of Calcutta.
There remains to be shortly noticed a comparatively new branch of commerce, which was already rising into importance,—that carried on with the settlements in North America, commonly, in those days, called the Plantation Trade. Davenant tells us that, according to "an account from such as have formerly perused the Custom House books with great care," the average annual value of exports from England to America, in provisions of all kinds, apparel, and household furniture, in the six years from 1682 to 1688, was about 350,000l.; while that of the imports, consisting of tobacco, sugar, ginger, cotton wool, fustic wood, indigo, cocoa, fish, pipe-staves, masts, furs, &c., together with fish from Newfoundland, was not less than 950,000l. Of the imports he calculates that about the value of 350,000l. might be retained for home consumption; so that there would remain about 600,000l. worth to be exported.
It was the new direction given to trade on the one hand by the East India Company, on the other by the interchange of commodities thus carried on between the mother-country and her Trans-atlantic colonies, to which is chiefly to be ascribed the eager agitation that now began of many of the principles of what has, in more recent times, been termed the science of Political Economy. It is hardly correct to state that the birth of this science in England is to be dated from the present period; for it had in fact been a subject of occasional speculation for at least a century before, in proof of which we need only refer to the very remarkable tract entitled "A Compendious or Brief Examination of certain ordinary Complaints of divers of our Countrymen in these our Days, by W. S.," (said to mean William Stafford,) which was published in 1581, and which discusses, with a great deal ​of acuteness, some of the most difficult questions connected with the subject of the origin and distribution of wealth. But the subject of foreign trade at least had never before been so systematically examined as it now came to be by a crowd of writers in the disputes that arose between various rival commercial interests. We have already had occasion to exhibit some specimens of the reasonings and general views of several of these early speculators, divided as they already were into a number of hostile schools and factions. The prevalent or more popular theories were what have been called the mercantile and manufacturing systems, which, although distinct, were so far from being opposed, that a belief in the one led naturally to the adoption of the other. The manufacturing system, however, was held by some who were not among the adherents of the mercantile system; and of the two it certainly was by far the least unreasonable. The mercantile system assumed that nothing was really wealth except gold and silver; and that consequently the sole test of the profitableness of any branch of trade was whether, on the whole, it brought more money into the country than it took out of it. The fundamental principle of the manufacturing system was, that a trade was profitable to the public whenever, by means of any restrictions or exclusive privileges, it could be made gainful to the capitalists by whom it was carried ​on, and their equally protected allies, the raisers and manufacturers of the merchandise the export of which it encouraged. The interest of the purchasers and consumers of the commodities brought home by the trade, that is, of the great body of the community, this theory entirely overlooked, or at any rate treated as a matter of very secondary importance. If the restrictions under which the trade was carried on could be shown to be advantageous for those actually engaged in it, that was enough—it was assumed that they must be beneficial for the public generally. There was, at any rate, nothing in all this repugnant to, or irreconcileable with, the above-mentioned principle of the mercantile system;—on the contrary, the doctrine that nothing was a gain in commerce except a balance in money, or an excess of exports over imports, agreed very well with the further notion that such balance and excess were to be best secured, not by leaving commerce free to flow in its natural channels, but by forcing it in particular directions through all sorts of embankments and artificial conduits.
The most noted among the theoretical writers on the subject of trade in this age, in England, were Mr. Thomas Mun, Sir Josiah Child, and Sir William Petty. The immediate object of most of the publications both of Mun and Child was the defence of the East India Company both against the assailants of its exclusive privileges and against other parties who denounced the Indian trade altogether as bringing a heavy annual loss upon the nation. It is curious to remark the gradual dawning upon men's minds of just views as to this matter with the advance of discussion and experience. Before the controversy about the trade with India, the almost universally received belief had been that the exportation of gold and silver ought as far as possible to be prevented altogether. This was what our old laws had constantly attempted to do; and in fact it was not till the year 1663 that, by a clause in an act for the encouragement of trade (15 Car. II. c. 7, s. 9), it was made lawful to export foreign coin or bullion,—"forasmuch as several considerable and advantageous trades cannot be conveniently driven and ​carried on without the species of money or bullion, and that it is found by experience that they are carried in greatest abundance (as to a common market) to such places as give free liberty for exporting the same, and the better to keep in and increase the current coins of this kingdom," Here we find apparently a partial recognition of the principle, which was properly the distinguishing principle of the mercantile system, that a trade, though occasioning the export of bullion, might still be profitable, if its imports, by being re-exported, brought back to the kingdom more bullion than had in the first instance been carried out. It was upon this consideration that Mun first, and afterwards Child, endeavoured to establish the profitableness of the trade with India: they did not, and could not, deny that it was only to be carried on by a regular annual exportation of treasure to a considerable amount; but they contended that, although, looked at by itself, it thus showed an unfavourable balance, or, in other words, might be called a losing trade, yet it became in the end greatly the reverse by the much greater amount of treasure which it enabled us every year to draw back from other European countries, which we supplied, after satisfying our own consumption, with eastern commodities. As an answer to the particular objection which it professed to meet, this reasoning was sufficiently conclusive; and the mercantile system, in so far as it opposed the old prejudice against the exportation of gold and silver in any circumstances, was undoubtedly in the right, and was a step in advance. It was even in advance of the law of 1663, which only permitted the exportation of foreign bullion; for the argument urged by Mun and Child implied no limitation of that kind. Mun published his Defence of the East India Trade in 1621; his Treasure by Foreign Trade, his principal work, did not appear till 1664, some years after the author's death, but had probably been written about 1635 or 1640. Child's New Discourse of Trade, the principal object of which was to urge the reduction of the ​legal rate of interest, was first published, as already stated, in 1668, and re-published in 1690: the anonymous pamphlet attributed to him in defence of the East India Company appeared, as we have also mentioned above, in 1677. These works of Mun and Child, mistaken as the writers are in some of their leading principles, contain many incidental arguments and remarks of great value, and which must have materially helped to advance the science of which they treat, notwithstanding their fundamental errors, the principal work of Sir William Petty, besides his Political Arithmetic, which treats chiefly of the subject of population, is his "Quantulumcunque," a treatise on money, published in 1682, in which there are also many sound observations, though even he had not altogether emancipated himself, any more than his predecessors and contemporaries, from the false notion that there was something about gold and silver distinguishing them as articles of commerce from all other commodities. The first promulgation of perfectly sound views upon this subject was reserved for a date a few years beyond the close of the present period.
In 1655 Cromwell had appointed his son Richard, and many other lords of his council, judges, and gentlemen, together with about twenty merchants of London, York, Newcastle, Yarmouth, Dover, and other towns, "to meet and consider by what means the traffic and navigation of the Republic might be best promoted and regulated," and to make a report to him on the subject. But the first permanent Board of Trade appears to have been that established, on the recommendation of Ashley, by Charles II., in 1668, under the name of the Council of Commerce, consisting of a president, vice-president, and nine other members, with regular salaries. The Earl of Sandwich was appointed the first president; and after his death, in the sea-fight of 1672, Ashley himself, now Earl of Shaftesbury and Lord Chancellor, was nominated as his successor in a new commission, in which the reasons for establishing the council were stated to be ​the considerable enlargement that had of late years taken place in his majesty's dominions, "by the occasion of many great colonies and plantations in America and elsewhere," and the increase that the customs and royal revenues had received, as well as the trade and general wealth of the kingdom, by the mutual commerce and traffic between England and the said colonies and plantations. This Council of Commerce, however, remained in existence only a few years, Charles probably finding the expense inconvenient.
According to the account laid before the House of Commons in 1791, as made up at the Navy Office, the tonnage of the royal navy was, at the Restoration, 57,463 tons; in 1685, at the end of the reign of Charles II., 103,558; and at the Revolution, in 1688, 101,892. Notwithstanding the attention, therefore, which James II. is said to have paid to maritime affairs, and the liberal expenditure on this branch of the public service for which it is customary to give him credit, the royal navy would appear to have been diminished rather than augmented in the course of his short reign.
Among the acts of the Convention Parliament, in 1660, was one (the 12 Car. II. c. 35) giving a new establishment to the Post Office, or rather continuing the regulations which had been established by the Commonwealth ordinance in 1656. The lowest rate fixed by this act, was two-pence, which was the charge for a single letter between places not more than eighty miles distant from each other. There is nothing said about franking in the act; although a resolution brought up by a committee of the House of Commons on the 28th of March, 1735, and agreed to by the House, affirms that the privilege of franking by the members of that House "began with the erecting a post-office within this kingdom by act of parliament." In 1663 the post- office revenue, along with the produce of the wine licences, was settled by another act (15 Car. II. c. 14) on the Duke of York and his heirs male; at which time it appears from a clause in the act that the office of postmaster-general was farmed at a yearly rent of 21,500l ​On the accession of James II. the revenue of the post-office was estimated at 65,000l. per annum. As connected with this matter it may be here mentioned that the first toll-gates or turnpikes erected in England are supposed to have been established in 1663, by the act 15 Car. II. c. 1, entitled "An Act for Repairing the Highways within the Counties of Hertford, Cambridge, and Huntingdon." They were ordered to be erected at Wadesmill in Hertfordshire, at Caxton in Cambridgeshire, and at Stilton in Huntingdonshire. The preamble of the act recites that "the ancient highway and post-road leading from London to York, and so into Scotland, and likewise from London into Lincolnshire, lieth for many miles in the counties of Hertford, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, in many of which places the road, by reason of the great and many loads which are weekly drawn in waggons through the said places, as well by reason of the great trade of barley and malt that cometh to Ware, and so is conveyed by water to the city of London, as other carriages, both from the north parts, as also from the city of Norwich, St. Edmondsbury, and the town of Cambridge to London, is very ruinous, and become almost impassable, insomuch that it is become very dangerous to all his majesty's liege people that pass that way."
The growth of London during the present period, notwithstanding the ravages of the great plague and fire, still proceeded at an accelerating rate. We shall briefly note down in their chronological order a few of the facts which more distinctly indicate this continued extension of the English metropolis. An act passed in 1662 (the 13 and 14 Car. II. c. 2), for repairing the highways in London and Westminster, supplies us with various particulars as to its state at that time. The preamble of the act recites that "the common highways leading unto and from the cities of London and Westminster and the suburbs thereof, and other places within the present weekly bills of mortality, by reason of the multitude of houses lately built, and through the stopping and filling up the ditches and sewers, and neglect of timely ​reparations, are at present, and for some years past have been, so miry and foul as is not only very noisome, dangerous, and inconvenient to the inhabitants thereabouts, but to all the king's liege people riding and travelling to and from the said cities." The following "common highways and new-built streets" are particularly ordered to be immediately repaired, new-paved, or otherwise amended:—namely, "the street or way from the end of Petty France to St. James's House, and one other street from St. James's House up to the Highway (the present St. James's-street), and one other street in St. James's Fields, commonly called the Pall Mall, and also one other street beginning from the Mews up to Piccadilly (the present Haymarket), and from thence towards the Stone Bridge to the furthermost building near the Bull, at the corner of Air-street." The number of hackney-coaches now allowed to be licensed, it appears from another clause of the act, was four hundred, or one hundred more than in 1654. Another clause, on the ground that "great quantities of sea-coal ashes, dust, dirt, and other filth, of late times have been and daily are thrown into the streets, lanes, and alleys" of the capital, directs the inhabitants to sweep the streets before their respective houses twice a week, under a penalty of 3s. 4d. for every instance of neglect. Every person whose house fronted the street was also ordered to "hang out candles or lights in lanterns or otherwise in come part of his house next the street" every night, between Michaelmas and Lady-day, from dark until nine o'clock in the evening, under the penalty of 1s. So that at this time the streets of London were not lighted at all during the summer months, and not after nine o'clock even in winter. Finally, a list is given of streets which the lord mayor and city authorities are authorized to receive subscriptions for repairing, as being "so narrow that they are incommodious to coaches, carts, and passengers, and prejudicial to commerce and trading:" these were, "the street or passage at or near the Stocks in London, the street and passage from Fleet Conduit to St. Paul's Church in London, the passage through the White Hart ​Inn from the Strand into Covent Garden, the street and passage by and near Exeter House and the Savoy (being obstructed by a rail and the unevenness of the ground thereabouts), the passage and street of St. Martin's-lane out of the Strand, the passage or street of Field-lane, commonly called Jack-an-apes-lane, going between Chancery-lane and Lincoln's Inn Fields, the passage and Gatehouse of Cheapside into St. Paul's Churchyard, the passage against St. Dunstan's Church in the West (being obstructed by a wall), the street and passage by and near the west end of the Poultry in London, and the passage at Temple Bar." After the great fire in 1666, various additional streets in the part of the city that had to be rebuilt were ordered to be widened by two other acts (the 18 and 19 Car. II. c. 8, s. 21, 22; and the 22 Car. II. c. 11, s. 1). This terrible visitation, and the pestilence by which it was preceded, instead of half destroying and depopulating the metropolis, only gave a new impulse to its increase both in size and in number of inhabitants. After a few years the portion of it that had been laid waste rose again from its ruins greatly improved in many respects—with the old narrow and crooked streets for the most part straightened and made comparatively spacious and airy, and with the substitution everywhere of houses of brick, separated by substantial party-walls, for the former tenements of wood offering one continued dry forest to whatever chance spark might at any time fall among them. New buildings also continued to spread faster than ever beyond the ancient limits. In 1674 an order in council was issued to restrain such extension,—for the last time, it is believed, that that exercise of the prerogative was attempted. The increase of the west end continued to proceed at so great a rate that, in the first year of the next reign (1685), acts of parliament were passed erecting two new parishes in that quarter: the one, that of St. Anne's, Westminster, consisting principally of streets that had recently been erected on a piece of ground formerly called Kemp's Field; the other, that of St. James's, Westminster, comprehending Jermyn-street and other ​neighbouring streets, lately erected on what used to be called St. James's Fields. Both these districts had been till now included in the parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. Sir William Petty, we may observe, in his "Political Arithmetic," published in 1687, estimates the population of London at 696,000. He founds his calculation on the number of burials within the bills of mortality, the annual average of which he makes to be 23,212; and on the assumption that one person in every thirty died in the course of the year. Ten years later, Gregory King, calculating from the number of houses as ascertained from the hearth-money returns, made the population of London to amount only to about 530,000. This estimate is probably as much too low as that of Petty may be too high.
The money of the Commonwealth was all called in after the Restoration, and a new gold and silver coinage immediately struck, similar to that of the preceding reign. In this first coinage of Charles II. the pieces were formed by the ancient method of hammering; the minters who had been employed in coining Cromwell's milled money having, it is supposed, withdrawn or concealed themselves, in apprehension of punishment, and probably also carried their machinery away with them. Milled money, however, was again coined in 1662, and of a sort superior to any that had as yet been produced, having graining or letters upon the rim, an improvement which had not appeared upon the milled money either of Queen Elizabeth or of Charles I. The new gold coin called the Guinea was first struck in 1662, without graining on the rim, and with graining in 1664. It was so called as being made of gold brought from Guinea by the African Company, who, as an encouragement to them to bring over gold to ​be coined, wore permitted by their charter to have their stamp of an elephant impressed upon whatever pieces should be struck from the metal they imported. "Of these guineas," says Leake, "forty-four and an half were coined out of the pound Troy, to go for twenty shillings each, though they never went for so little." On all the English money of Charles II., coined after 1662, his head is made to look to the left, being the opposite direction to that in which his father's head is placed; and ever since it has been observed as a rule to make two successive sovereigns look in opposite ways on their respective coinages. Private halfpence and farthings of copper and brass, such as were formerly common, had again come into use in the time of the Commonwealth; and they continued to circulate after the Restoration till they were supplanted by an issue of the same description of money from the Royal Mint in 1672—a previous coinage of the year 1665 having been called in after only a very small portion of it had got into circulation. In 1684, the last year of his reign, Charles coined farthings of tin, with only a bit of copper in the middle. The figure, still retained, of Britannia sitting on a globe, holding in her right hand an olive-branch, and in her left a spear and shield, first appears on the copper coinage of this reign—having been modelled, it is said, after the celebrated court beauty, Miss Stewart, afterwards Duchess of Richmond.
The money of James II. is of the same kind with that of his brother. His only farthings and halfpence, like those struck by Charles in the last year of his reign, are of tin, with a bit of copper in the centre. After his abdication he coined money in Ireland out of old brass guns and kitchen utensils, and attempted to make it current as sterling silver. Afterwards even the brass failed, and he was obliged to fabricate crowns, half-crowns, shillings, and sixpences out of pewter.
* ↑ First published in Chalmers's Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, p. 49 (edit, of 1804). Mr. Chalmers observes, that "there was an additional duty on wines imposed in 1672, and an impost on wine, tobacco, and linen, in 1685; but, as these duties were kept separate, they appear neither to have swelled nor diminished the usual receipt of the Custom-house duties in any of the years, either of peace or of war." We understand the sums given in the account, therefore, to be the produce of the rates which used to be called the Old Subsidy.
* ↑ The authority for the statement of exports and imports in 1663 and 16G9 is the First Part of a Report made to the Commissioners of Public Accounts in 1711, by Dr. Charles Davenant, who then held the office of inspector-general of customs. (See Lord Whitworth's edition of Davenant's works, Lon, 1771, vol. v. p. 376, where, however, there is a misprint, third line from the bottom, of "exports" for "imports," and of "imports" for "exports.") Davenant says that he takes the statement from "a manuscript remaining in the Custom House, which appears to be an authentic copy of what had been offered to the House of Commons," but in what year he cannot find. (p. 351.) From the manner in which he expresses himself, however, he has left it somewhat doubtful whether the sums he has put down are the value of the total exports and imports of the kingdom, or only of those of the port of London, which he seems to intimate bore the proportion of between three and four to one to those of the rest of the country, (p. 352.) The statement has been generally assumed to be that of the total exports and imports. It is repeatedly quoted or referred to in the work entitled "The British Merchant," a series of papers first published in 1713, with the object, in which it succeeded, of defeating the proposed treaty of commerce with France which was to have followed the peace of Utrecht, and afterwards collected in three vols. 8vo., in 1743. The principal author of "The British Merchant" was Henry Martin, Esq., who succeeded Davenant as inspector-general of the customs; but Anderson (Chron. Deduct. of Com. ii. 496), and after him Macpherson (Annals of Com. ii. 534), are mistaken in supposing the account for the year 1668-9 to rest upon his authority; for it is given by Davenant, along with that for 1662-3. The authors of "The British Merchant," who are sturdy upholders of what has been called the Mercantile Theory, maintain that the balance against us indicated by these two statements, or the "great national loss," as they term it, was occasioned by our having then a full trade with France; "which full trade," say they, "being afterwards prohibited, the general balance in the year 1699 was got to be so far in our favour as 1,147,660l. 10s. 9d. [that is to say, such was now the excess of exports over imports]: total gained by us from having no trade with France in the year 1699, 3,280,525l. 8s. 9d.: which balance in the year 1703 was so considerably increased as to be no less than 2,117,523l. 3s. 10½d.; total gained by us from having no trade with France in the year 1703, 4,250,388l. 1s. 10½d. A most interesting consideration." All this declamation, in which the figures of arithmetic are made to play as wild a part as ever did those of rhetoric, is gravely repeated and adopted by Anderson (ii. 496). The statement for the year 1662-3 he had previously characterized, in the same spirit, as "a most melancholy account, truly," "more especially," he adds, "as coming from this able author, who possessed that important office [of inspector of the customs] in the reigns of King William and Queen Anne." (p. 478.) But, if he had gone to Davenants own Report, he would have found wherewithal to console himself. "Here you may please to observe," remarks that writer, after having transcribed the two accounts, "what an appearance there is of an excess against us all the world over those two years, in which no man in his right senses will deny but that we carried on a thriving traffic." (p. 377.)
* ↑ Discourse First, "That Foreign Trade is beneficial to England," in the Second Part of "Discourses on the Public Revenues and on Trade," first published in 1698, in answer to Mr. Pollexfen's "England and East India inconsistent in their Manufactures;" in Lord Whitworth's edition of Davenant, vol. i. pp. 346-393.
* ↑ Some modern accounts of the Navigation Act state that the goods thus forbidden to be brought from any part of Europe except in English ships, or ships of the country, were those that came to he known in commerce by the name of enumerated articles. But this is a mistake: what were formerly called enumerated goods, an expression used in many subsequent acts of parliament, were certain articles, the produce of the English plantations, with regard to which it was provided by the act (sec. 18) that they should not be conveyed to any part of the world whatsoever without first being shipped to England, and brought on shore there.
* ↑ This important extension of the first Navigation Act has not usually been noticed. But it is common to speak of a provision in the act of the 12 Car. II., making it necessary that, in addition to the ship being English property, the master and at least three-fourths of the sailors should be Englishmen, as a new regulation and a very material improvement upon the old law (see Blackstone, Com. i. 419); the fact being, that the act of 1651 demands very nearly the same thing,—it requires that the majority of the crew shall be English.—See the act in Scobell, II. 176.
* ↑ See these and other authorities collected by Mr. M'CuIloch, Diet. of Com. p. 819.
* ↑ Chron. of Com ii. 548.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 571.
* ↑ This agrees very nearly with the account printed by Chalmers, if we take in the additional duty on wines, which that year produced nearly 150,000l.
* ↑ Siècle de Louis XIV. chap. 32.
* ↑ Chron. Deduct. of Commerce, ii. 569.
* ↑ Macpherson, Com. with India, pp. 128–132.
* ↑ Discourses on the Public Revenues and Trade; Part II. Discourse III. "On the Plantation Trade:" in Works, ii. 17.
* ↑ A pretty full account of this tract (which at one time used to be attributed to Shakspeare, and was indeed reprinted with his name in 1751) may be found in the Penny Magazine for 1836, pp. 130, 148, 164, and 190. We may add, here, that according to a notice in Reed's Catalogue of Law Books, 1809, p. 36, it is said, in the "Memoirs of William Lambarde, in Append. in Bibl. Brit. Top." to have been really written by Sir Thomas Smvthe or John Yates, in the reign of Henry VIII. or Edward VI.
* ↑ "Even jewels, tin, lead, or iron, though durable, do not deserve to be esteemed treasure," says one of these writers, Mr. Pollexfen, in a publication entitled "England and East India Inconsistent in their Manufactures." quoted by Davenant, Works, i. 382.
* ↑ Principles of Political Economy, by J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. 2nd edit. 1830, p. 30.
* ↑ Thurloe's State Papers, iv. 177.
* ↑ In the common editions of the Statutes these acts are included among the public acts, and numbered 1 Jac. II. c. 20 and 22: in the Record Commission edition their titles only are given in the list of Private Acts.
* ↑ Political Observations and Conclusions, published at the end of the fourth edition of Chalmers's Estimate of the Comparative Strength of Great Britain, 8vo. Lon. 1804.
* ↑ Hist. Account, p. 367
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