If this could be compassed, the woollen manufacture would advance without any unnatural driving or compulsion. For we want hands, not manufactures, in England; and laws to compel the poor to work, not work wherewithal to give them employment.
To make England a true gainer by the woollen manufacture, we should be able to work the commodity so cheap, as to undersell all comers to the markets abroad.
I shall, my lord, advance 2 propositions which may sound very strangly, and yet perhaps will be thought very right and true, upon a mature examination.
1st, That it is not the benefit, nor interest of England in general, that wool should bear a high price in our markets at home.
2dly, That by a great consumption of the woollen manufacturers within this kingdom, the public will not reap such an advantage as some imagine.
Fine broad cloth, was the antient drapery of England, and which first recommended this manufacture to the use of foreign countries. This is the natural issue and product of the kingdom, inimitable abroad,and it must be very great carelessness and want of conduct that can make us lose this trade so beneficial to the nation.
But though the wool of other places is not so fit for workmanship as ours, yet the commodity is abounding almost in all countries of Europe; and if the cloth of England be brought any way to bear too high a price, it may put some of our neighbours either upon the industry of manufacturing their own better, or upon the frugality to content themselves with what they can make at home; and it may reduce other parts to set up new manufactures in their own countries, which will be very detrimental to the vent, especially of our narrow and coarser cloaths.
Nothing can make this commodity beneficial, so as to enrich England, but to have the woollen manufacture so cheap, as that great quantities of our cloth may be exported, and at such a rate, as that we may be able to undersell all nations, and discourage all people from setting it up.
But this can never be, if, by arts and inventions, we endeavour to give wool an unnatural price here at home; upon which score, I have advanced the 2d proposition, that England reaps no such advantage by a large consumption of the woollen manufacture within this kingdom.
For it is the interest of all trading nations whatsoever, that their home consumption should be little, of a cheap and foreign growth, and that their own manufactures should be sold at the highest markets, and spent abroad; since by what is consumed at home, one loseth only what another gets, and the nation in general is not at all the richer; but all foreign consumption is a clear and certain profit. So that in the woollen manufacture, England does not get by what is spent here by the people, buy by what is sold abroad in other countries.
If the people of England are willing, and pleased to wear Indian silks and stuffs, of which the prime cost in India is not above 1/4th part of what their own commodities would stand them in here; and if they are thereby thus enabled to export, so much of their own product, whatever is so saved is clear gain to the kingdom in general. But to set this matter in a clearer light.
Suppose 200,000 l. per ann. of the prime sum sent to India, is returned in commodities for our own consumption: and, Suppose 1/2 this sum, viz. 100,000 l. to be returned in such goods as are worn here, in the stead and room of the woollen manufactures.
From 100,000 l. prime cost to India there may be expected goods that fell here for 400,000 l.
So that by sending to India 100,000 l.
We gain for our own consumption clear 300,000 l.
Now this must be clear profit to the kingdom, because this sum would be otherways laid out and consumed in our own product;which product we are, by this means, enabled to export. For when we come to examine into the true reason of the great wealth of Holland, we shall find it chiefly to arise from this frugality of consuming at home what is cheap, or comes cheaply, and carrying abroad what is rich, and will yield most money.
It is granted, that bengals and stained callicoes, and other East-India goods, do hinder the consumption of Norwich stuffs, crapes, English ratines, shaloons, says, perpetuanas and antherines: but the same objection will lie against the use of any thing that is of foreign growth; for the importation of wine undoubltedly hinders the consumption of barley; and Engalnd could subsist, and the poor perhaps would have fuller employment, if foreign trade were quite laid aside; but this would ill consist with our being great at sea, upon which (under the present posture of affairs in Europe) all our safety does certainly depend.
That the East-India goods do something interfer with the woollen manufacture must undoubtedly be granted; but the principal matter to be considered is, which way the nation in general is more cheaply supplied.
If 100,000 l. prime cost to India, brings home so many goods as stand in the stead, and supply the room of 400,000 l. of our own manufactures, it must certainly be advisable not to prohibit such a trade, but rather to divert the wool used in these our home manufacutres, and the craft, labour and industry employed about them, to the making fine broad cloth, coarse and narrow cloths, stuffs and other commodities, fit for sale in foreign markets; since it is an undoubted truth, that 400,000 l. worth of our native goods sold abroad, does add more to the nation's general flock and wealth, than 4 millions worth of our home product consumed within the kingdom.
