An Humble Proposal to the People of England, for the Increase of their Trade, and Encouragement of Their Manufactures. Whether the Present Uncertainty of Affairs Issues in Peace or War

2. Due care being then taken to prevent any exportation of wool to France, as, I take it for granted, might be done with much more ease when the Irish had encouragement to sell their wool at home, we should soon find a difference in the expense of wool, by the French being disabled from imitating our manufactures abroad, and the consumption of our own would naturally increase in proportion. First, they would not be able to thrust their manufactures into foreign markets as they now do, by which the sale of our manufactures must necessarily be abated; and, secondly, they would want supplies at home, and consequently our manufactures would be more called for, even in France itself, and that in spite of penalties and prohibitions.

Thus by our taking off the Irish wool, we should in time prevent its exportation to France; and by preventing its going to France, we should disable the French, and increase the consumption of our own manufactures in all the ports whither they now send them, and even in France itself.

I have met with some people who have made calculations of the quantity of wool which is sent annually from Ireland to France, and they have done it by calculating, first how many packs of wool the whole kingdom of Ireland may produce; and this they do again from the number of sheep which they say are fed in Ireland in the whole. How right this calculation may be I will not determine.

First, they tell us, there are fed in Ireland thirty millions of sheep, and as all these sheep are supposed be sheared once every year, they must produce exactly thirty millions of fleeces, allowing the fell wool in proportion to the number of sheep killed.

It is observable, by a very critical account of the wool produced annually in Romney marsh, in the county of Kent, and published in the said Plan of the English Commerce, that the fleeces of wool of those large sheep, generally weigh above four pounds and a half each. It is computed thus; first he tells us that Romney marsh contains 47,110 acres of land, that they feed 141,330 sheep, whose wool being shorn, makes up 2,523 packs of wool, the sum of which is, that every acre feeds three sheep, every sheep yields one fleece, and 56 fleeces make one pack of wool, all which comes out to 2,523 packs of wool, twenty-three fleeces over, every pack weighing two hundred and forty pounds of wool. Vide Plan, &c. p. 259.

I need not observe here, that the sheep in Ireland are not near so large as the sheep in Romney marsh, these last being generally the largest breed of sheep in England, except a few on the bank of the river Tees in the bishoprick of Durham. Now if these large sheep yield fleeces of four pounds and a half of wool, we may be supposed to allow the Irish sheep, take them one with another, to yield three pounds of wool to a fleece, or to a sheep, out of which must be deducted the fell wool, most of which is of a shorter growth, and therefore cannot be reckoned so much by at least a pound to a sheep. Begin then to account for the wool, and we may make some calculation from thence of the number of sheep.

1. If of the Romney marsh fleeces, weighing four pounds and a half each, fifty-six fleeces make one pack of wool; then seventy fleeces Irish wool, weighing three pounds each fleece, make a pack.

2. If we import from Ireland one hundred thousand packs of wool, as well in the fleece as in the yarn, then we import the wool of seven millions of sheep fed in Ireland every year.

Come we next to the gross quantity of wool; as the Irish make all their own manufactures, that is to say, all the woollen manufactures, needful for their own use, such as for wearing apparel, house furniture, &c., we cannot suppose but that they use much more than the quantity exported to England, besides that, it is too well known, that notwithstanding the prohibition of exportation, they do daily ship off great quantities of woollen goods, not only to the West Indies, but also to France, to Spain, and Italy; and we have had frequent complaints of our merchants from Lisbon and Oporto, of the great quantity of Irish woollen manufactures that are brought thither, as well broadcloth as serges, druggets, duroys, frieze, long-ells, and all the other sorts of goods which are usually exported from England; add these clandestine exportations to the necessary clothing, furniture, and equipages, of that whole nation, in which are reckoned two millions and a half of people, and we cannot suppose they make use of less than two hundred thousand packs of wool yearly among themselves, which is the wool of fourteen millions of sheep more.

We must, then, allow all the rest of the wool to be run or smuggled, call it what you please, to France, which must be at least a hundred to a hundred and twenty thousand packs more: for it seems the Irish tell us that they feed thirty millions of sheep in the whole kingdom of Ireland.

If, then, they run over to France a hundred thousand packs of wool yearly, which I take to be the least, all this amounts to twenty-eight millions of fleeces together; the other two millions of fleeces may justly be deducted for the difference between the quantity of wool taken from the sheep that are killed, which we call fell wool, and the fleece wool shorn.

Upon the foot of this calculation, there are a hundred thousand packs of wool produced in Ireland every year, which we ought to take off, and which, for want of our taking it off, is carried away to France, where it is wholly employed to mimick our manufactures and abuse our trade; lessening thereby the demand of our own goods abroad, and even in France itself. This, therefore, is a just reproach to our nation, and they are certainly guilty of a great neglect in not taking off that wool, and more effectually preventing it being carried away to France.

It must be confessed, that unless we do find some way to take off this wool from the Irish, we cannot so reasonably blame them for selling it to the French, or to anybody else that will buy, for what else can they do with it, seeing you shut up all their ports against the manufacturers; at least you shut them up as far as you are able; and if you will neither let them manufacture it, for not letting them transport the manufacture when made is in effect forbidding to make them; I say, if you will neither let them manufacture their wool nor take it off their hands, what must they do with it?

But I come next to the grand objection; namely, that we cannot take it off, that we do take off as much as we can use, and a very great quantity it is too; that we are not able to take more, that is to say, we know not what to do with it if we take it; that we cannot manufacture it, or if we do, we cannot sell the goods; and so, according to the known rule in trade, that what cannot be done with profit or without loss, we may say of it that it cannot be done; so in the sense of trade, we cannot take their wool off, and if they must run it over to France, they must, we cannot help it.

This, I say, is a very great mistake; and I do affirm, that as we ought to take off the whole quantity of the Irish wool, so we may and are able to do it. That our manufacture is capable of being so increased, and the consumption of it increased also, as well at home as abroad; that it would in the ordinary course of trade call for all the wool of Ireland, if it were much more than it is, and employ it profitably; besides employing many thousands of poor people more than are now employed, and who indeed want employment.

Upon this foundation, and to bring this to be true, as I shall presently make appear, I must add, that a just reproach lies upon us for indolence, and an unaccountable neglect of our national interests, in not sufficiently exerting ourselves to improve our trade and increase our manufactures; which is the title, as it is the true design, of this whole work.

The affirming, as above, that we are able to increase our manufacture, and by that increase to take off more wool, may, perhaps, be thought an arrogance too great to be justified, and would be a begging the question in an egregious manner, if I were not in a condition to prove what I say; I shall therefore apply myself directly to evidence, and to put it out of doubt: —

By increasing our manufacture, I am content to be understood to mean the increasing the consumption, otherwise, to increase quantity only, would be to ruin the manufacturers, not improve the trade. This increasing the consumption is to be considered under two generals.

1. The consumption at home.

2. The exportation, or consumption abroad.

I begin with the last; namely, the consumption abroad. This is too wide a field to enter upon in particular here, I refer it to be treated at large by itself; but as far as it serves to prove what I have affirmed above, namely, that the consumption of our manufactures may be improved abroad, so far it is needful to speak of it here; I shall confine it to the English colonies and factories abroad.

It is evident, that by the increase of our colonies, the consumption of our manufactures has been exceedingly increased; not only experience proves it, but the nature of the thing makes it impossible to be otherwise; the island of St. Christopher, is a demonstration beyond all argument; that island is increased in its product and people, by the French giving it up to us at the treaty of Utrecht. Its product of sugar is almost equal to that of Barbadoes, and will in a very few years exceed it; the exports from hence to that island are increased in proportion; why then do we not increase our possessions, plant new colonies, and better people our old ones? Both might be done to infinite advantage, as might be made out, had we room for it, past contradiction.

We talk of, and expect a war with Spain; were the advantages which new settlements in the abandoned countries of America, as well the island as the continent considered, we should all wish for such a war, that the English might by their superiority at sea, get and maintain a firm footing, as well on the continent as the islands of America: there the Spainards, like the fable of the dog in the manger, neither improve it themselves, nor will admit others to improve; I mean in all the south continent of America, from Buenos Ayres to port St. Julien, a country fruitful, a climate healthful, able to maintain plentifully any numbers, even to millions of people, with an uninterrupted communication within the land, as far as to the golden mountain of the Andes or Cordilleras, where the Chilians, unsubdued by any European power, a docible, civilized people, but abhorring the Spaniards, would not fail to establish a commerce infinitely profitable, exchanging gold for all your English manufactures, to an inexpressible advantage.

Among the islands, why should not we, as well as the French, plant upon the fruitful countries of Cuba and Hispaniola, as rich and capable of raising sugars, cocoa, ginger, pimento, indigo, cotton, and all the other productions usual in that latitude, as either the Barbadoes or Jamaica.

Our factories, for they cannot yet be called colonies, on the coast of Africa, offer us the like advantages. Why are they not turned into populous and powerful colonies, as they might be? Why not encouraged from hence? And why is not their trade espoused and protected as our other colonies and factories? but left to be ravaged by the naked and contemptible negroes; plundered, and their trade ravished by the more unjust and more merciless interlopers, who, instead of thieves, for they are no better, would be called separate traders only, though they break in by violence and fraud upon the property of an established company, and rob them of their commerce, even under the protection of their own forts and castles, which these paid nothing towards the cost of.

Why does not England enlarge and encourage the commerce of the coast of Guinea? plant and fortify, and establish such possessions there as other nations, the Portuguese for example, in the opposite coast on the same latitude? Is it not all owing to the most unaccountable indolence and neglect? What hinders but that we might ere now have had strong towns and an inhabited district round them, and a hundred thousand Christians dwelling at large in that country, as the Portuguese have now at Melinda, in the same latitude, on the eastern coast?

And what hinders, but that same indolence and neglect, that they have not there growing at this time, the coffee of Mocha, as the Dutch have at Batavia; the tea of China, the cocoa of the Caraccas, the spices of the Moluccas, and all the other productions of the remotest Indies, which grow now in the same latitude, and which cost us so much treasure yearly to purchase, and which, as has been tried, would prosper here as well as in the countries from which we fetch them?

What a consumption of English manufacture would follow such a plantation? and what an increase of trade would necessarily attend an increase of people there?

I have not room to enlarge here upon these heads; they are fully stated in the said Plan of English Commerce, and in several other tracts of trade lately published by the same author, and to that I refer. See the Plan, chap. iii. page 335. and chap. v. page 363.

I come next to the consumption at home, and here indeed the proof lies heavy upon ourselves; nothing but an unaccountable supreme negligence of our own apparent advantages can be the cause of the whole grievance; such a negligence, as I think, no nation but the English are, or can be guilty of; I mean no nation that has the like advantage of a manufacture, and that has a hundred thousand packs of wool every year unwrought up, and a million of people unemployed.

N. B. All our manufactures, whether of wool, silk, or thread, and all other wares, hard or soft, though we have a very great variety, yet do not employ all our people, by a great many; nay, we have some whole counties into which the woollen, or silk, or linen manufacture, may be said never to have set their feet, I mean as to the working part; or so little as not to be worth naming; such in particular as Cambridge, Huntingdon, Hertford, Bedford; the first three are of late indeed come into the spinning part a little, but it is but very little; the like may be said of the counties of Cheshire, Stafford, Derby, and Lincoln, in all which very little, if any, manufactures are carried on; neither are the counties of Kent, Sussex, Surry, or Hampshire, employed in any of the woollen manufactures worth mentioning; the last indeed on the side about Alton and Alresford, may be said to do a little; and the first just at Canterbury and Cranbrook. But what is all they do compared to the extent of four counties so populous that it is thought there are near a million of people in them?

Seeing then, I say, there are yet so many people want employ, and so much wool unwrought up, and which for want of being thus wrought up, is carried away by a clandestine, smuggling, pernicious trade, to employ our enemies in trade, the French, and to endanger our manufactures at foreign markets, how great is our negligence, and how much to the reproach of our country is it, that we do not improve this trade, and increase the consumption of the manufactures as we ought to do? I mean the consumption at home, for of the foreign consumption I have spoken already.

It seems to follow here as a natural inquiry, after what has been said, that we should ask, How is this to be done, and by what method can the people of England increase the home consumption of their woollen manufactures?

I cannot give a more direct answer to this question, or introduce what follows in a better manner, than in the very words of the author of the book so often mentioned above, as follows, speaking of this very thing, thus: —

“The next branch of complaint,” says this author, “is, that the consumption of our woollen manufacture is lessened at home.

“This, indeed,” continues he, “though least regarded, has the most truth and reason in it, and merits to be more particularly inquired into; but supposing the fact to be true, let me ask the complainer this question, viz., why do we not mend it? and that without laws, without teazing the parliament and our sovereign, for what they find difficult enough to effect even by law? The remedy is our own, and in our own power. I say, why do not the people of Great Britain, by general custom and by universal consent, increase the consumption of their own manufacture by rejecting the trifles and toys of foreigners?

“Why do we not appear dressed in the growth of our own country, and made fine by the labour of our own hands?” Vide Plan of the English Commerce, p. 252.

And again, p. 254; “We must turn the complaints of the people upon themselves, and entreat them to encourage the manufactures of England by a more general use and wearing of them. This alone would increase the consumption, as that alone would increase the manufacture itself.”

I cannot put this into a plainer or better way of arguing, or in words more intelligible to every capacity.

Did ever any nation but ours complain of the declining of their trade and at the same time discourage it among themselves? Complain that foreigners prohibit our manufactures, and at the same time prohibit it themselves? for refusing to wear it is the worst and severest way of prohibiting it.

We do indeed put a prohibition upon our trade when we stop up the stream, and dam up the channel of its consumption, by putting a slight upon the wearing it, and, as it were, voting it out of fashion; for if you once vote your goods out of wear, you vote them out of the market, and you had as good vote them contraband.

With what an impetuous gust of the fancy did we run into the product of the East Indies for some years ago? How did we patiently look on and see the looms empty, the workmen fled, the wives and children starve and beg, the parishes loaded, and the poor’s rates rise to a surprising height, while the ladies flourished in fine Massulapatam, chints, Indian damasks, China atlasses, and an innumerable number of rich silks, the product of the coast of Malabar, Coromandel, and the Bay of Bengal, and the poorer sort with calicoes? And with what infinite difficulty was a remedy obtained, and with what regret did the ladies part with that foreign pageantry, and stoop to wear the richest silks of their own manufacture, though these were the life of their country’s prosperity, and those the ruin of it?

When this was the case, how fared our trade? The state of it was thus, in a few words: —

The poor, as above, wanted bread; the wool lay on hand, sunk in price, and wanted a market; the manufacturers wanted orders, and when they made goods, knew not where to sell them; all was melancholy and dismal on that side; nothing but the East India trade could be said to thrive; their ships went out full of money and came home full of poison; for it was all poison to our trade. The immense sums of ready money that went abroad to India impoverished our trade, and indeed bid fair to starve it, and, in a word, to beggar the nation.

At home we were so far from working up the whole quantity or growth of our wool, that three or four years’ growth lay on hand in the poor tenants’ houses, for want of which they could not pay their rent.

The wool from Scotland, which comes all to us now, went another way, viz., to France, for the Union was not then made, and yet we had too much at home. Nor was the quantity brought from Ireland half so much as it is now.

Was all this difference from our own wearing, or not wearing the produce of our own manufacture? How unaccountably stupid then are we to run still retrograde to the public good of our country, and ruin our own commerce, by rejecting our own manufacture, setting our people to furnish other nations with cloths, and recommending the manufacture to other countries, and rejecting them ourselves?

If the difference was small, and the clothing of our own people was a thing of small moment, that it made no impression on the commerce, or the manufacture in general, it might be said to be too little to take notice of.

If our consumption at home is thus considerable, and the clothing of our own people does consume the wool of many millions of sheep; if the silk trade employs many thousands of families; if there is an absolute necessity of working up if possible all the growth of our wool, as well of Ireland as of England, or that else it would be run over to France, to the encouragement of rival manufactures, and the ruin of our own; in a word, if our own people, falling into a general use of our own manufacture, would effectually do this, and their continuing to neglect it would effectually throw our manufacture into convulsions, and stagnate the whole trade of the kingdom; if our wearing foreign silk manufactures did annually carry out 1,200,000l. sterling per annum for silks, to France and Italy, and above 600,000l. per annum for the like to India, all in spices, to the impoverishing our trade, by emptying us of all our ready money, as well as starving our poor for want of employment.

Again, if these grievances were very much abated, and indeed almost remedied by the several acts of parliament, first to prohibit East India silks, then to lay high duties, equal to prohibition, upon French silks; and, in the last place, an act to prohibit the use and wearing of printed calicoes; I say, if these acts have gone so far in the retrieving the dying condition of our woollen manufacture, and encouraging the silk manufacture; that in the first, we have wrought up all the English growth of wool, and that of Scotland too, which was never done before; and in the last have improved so remarkably in the silk manufacture, that all that vast sum of 1,800,000l. per annum, expended before in French and Indian silks, is now turned into the pockets of our own poor, and kept all at home, and the silks become a mere English manufacture as was before a foreign.