transacted in the "shops" that were "let,
ready-built, for all manner of tradesmen."

Of the commodities exposed for sale in
these temporary shops, would, first of all, be
clothing. Of woollen fabrics there would be
abundance. The great work of legislation
was to keep all the wool at home, and to make
the people wear nothing but woollen garments.
A writer of 1698 says:—"Men are very careful
to preserve their rents. But, above all,
gentlemen are in the greatest disquiet for their
wool. Both the living and the dead must be
wrapt in wool; nor is any law wanting to
complete the business, but only one;—that our
perukes should be made of wool." The great
problem of legislation was how to encourage
the growth of wool, and the manufacture of
wool; and a perpetual controversy was going
on between the manufacturers and the
agriculturists. The agriculturists were then the
Free Traders,—they wanted a foreign market
for their wool; the manufacturers would have
kept it all at home. But they both agreed
that nothing which interfered with wool
should be worn in England. Silk buttons
were an article of dress: the silk was bought
in foreign parts in exchange for our woollen
manufacture; but the making of silk buttons,
says the Act of 1698, was discouraged by
making buttons out of the shreds of cloth,—
and thousands of men, women, and children,
who made silk buttons with the needle, were
impoverished; and so a penalty of forty
shillings was to be paid by any unhappy tailor
who used his shreds to make buttons. But
this microscopic legislation was always
working in the dark. In 1697 the importation of
foreign lace and needlework was absolutely
prohibited, because the importation was "to
the great discouragement of the manufactures
in this kingdom." In 1699 the Act of 1697
was repealed, on account of the decay of the
woollen manufactures, because the prohibition
of foreign lace and needlework "has been
one great cause thereof, by being the
occasion that our woollen manufactures are
prohibited to be imported into Flanders." At
May Fair, in 1701, there must have been a
keen competition amongst the fashionable
ladies for the last chance of a purchase in the
fair of Indian silks and calicoes; for after the
29th of September, the wearing of all wrought
silks of the manufacture of Persia, China, or
India, and all coloured calicoes, was absolutely
prohibited. The whole principle of our
commercial legislation was protection,—to have
no real exchange with other countries, and no
free industry in our own commodities. The
interest of the consumer was never regarded.
The perpetual cry was the duty of employing
the poor,—in regulating which employment
the poor were starved. There was but one
man of those days who had discovered the
broad truths of commerce, which he
promulgated in these words:—"The whole world, as
to trade, is but one nation or people, and
therein nations are as persons. * * * There
can be no trade unprofitable to the people;
for if any prove so, men leave it off. * * *
No laws can set prices on trade. * * * All
favour to one trade or interest is an abuse,
and cuts off so much profit from the public."
It is a hundred and sixty years ago since the
great merchant, Sir Dudley North, proclaimed
these principles,—the highest application of
which belongs to our day, imperfectly
understood as they still may be.

But, with all the defects of the class legislation
that prevailed in the first year of the
eighteenth century, England was advancing
in commercial prosperity. In five years after
the peace of Ryswick, the exports were more
than doubled, and the mercantile marine more
than quadrupled. The exports in 1701 were
about six millions, of which about four
millions consisted of our own produce and
manufactures, one fifteenth part of our present
exports. In 1701, the mercantile navy carried
about three hundred thousand tons, one
fourteenth part of our present tonnage. The
Navigation Laws, which it has required the
slow growth of political philosophy to abolish,
bit by bit during two centuries, were held to
be the foundation of our marine superiority.
And yet, whilst an exclusive protection was
given to English-built vessels worked by
English seamen, we utterly lost the old Greenland
Whale Fishery for want of skilled crews.
At the Revolution, the agriculture of the
country required a stimulus; so the bounty
system was commenced. Foreign corn could
not be brought in, except when scarcity
prevailed at home; and the exporters of
English wheat received a bounty of five
shillings a quarter, when the home price did
not exceed forty shillings. The Dutch stored
the wheat, which the bounty to the grower
enabled them to buy at a cheaper rate than
the average European price, and sold it us
again in dear seasons, at a large profit. All
commerce was a system of restriction, evasion,
and compromise; resting upon the belief that
one nation's gain was another's loss—and that
commercial advantage was only to be measured
by the balance of money received for commodities,
and not by the exchange of the useful
products of industry, varying with the peculiar
soil, climate, and manners of the exchangers.

At this period England was not, in any
large sense of the term, a manufacturing
country. With the exception of our woollen
cloths—which amounted to nearly half our
exports—some articles of raw produce were
our chief shipments to foreign countries. The
principal products of our mines were lead and
tin, both of which we exported. Tin was in
great demand, both at home and abroad, on
account of the extension of luxurious habits,
which required pewter plates instead of
wooden trenchers. We raised and smelted no
copper, but imported it unwrought. The
greater part of our iron was also imported.
No beds of rock-salt had been worked,—edible
salt was imported; for the wretched produce