“ If it be, as I suppose, the tree of the commercial greatness of this country, I am satisfied that although some of its fruits may be bitter, yet upon the whole it has produced that greatness, that wealth, that prosperity, which make these small islands most remarkable in the history of the civilised world, which, upon the whole, diffuse happiness amidst this great community, and render this nation one of the most civilised, if not the most civilised, and powerful on the face of the globe. ”

“ These worthy factors, not content with all these various methods of oppression, to crown the whole, often set up people to act as master clothiers, on their stock, during any little glut of business; and as it is easy to imagine, give all the cloth so made, the preference of the market, though perhaps in all respects, least deserving of it. Hence, those that trade on their own bottoms, and employ the poor in good and bad times alike, are liable to all the disadvantages of the one, with little or no share in the benefits of the other. ”

“ Time, Lord Bacon said, was the greatest innovator; and if, at this advanced time of the world, after all our experience, we could not improve upon the system of our ancestors, our intellects must be what would hardly be asserted, not only quite unequal to theirs, but infinitely inferior. How, then, could it be pretended, that the same legislative arrangements applied in the reign of Elizabeth, when the trade of the whole British Empire was not equal to that of the port of London at this day, was strictly applicable at present, and suited to our improved situation? ”

“ So long as a plentiful supply of the first necessaries of life is denied by acts of the British legislation to the great body of the nation, so long will the government and the country be justly exposed to all the evils resulting from the discontent of the people. With a view to avert so great a danger by an act of universal justice, this meeting pledges itself to a united, energetic, and persevering effort for the total and immediate repeal of all laws affecting the free importation of grain. ”

“ The duty upon salt is a tax that every man in the nation contributes to according to his circumstances and condition in life; every subject contributes something; if he be a poor man, he contributes so small a trifle, it will hardly bear a name; if he be rich, he lives more luxuriously, and consequently contributes more; and if he be a man of a great estate, he keeps a great number of servants, and must therefore contribute a great deal. Upon the other hand, there is no tax that ever was laid upon the people of this nation, that is more unjust and unequal than the Land Tax. ”

“ I believe that the monarchy of England, its sovereignty mitigated by the acknowledged authority of the estates of the realm, has its root in the hearts of the people, and is capable of securing the happiness of the nation and the power of the State. ”

“ We have thrown upon the land the revenues of the Church, the administration of justice, and the estate of the poor; and this has been done, not to gratify the pride, or pamper the luxury of the proprietors of the land, but because, in a territorial Constitution, you, and those whom you have succeeded, have found the only security for self-government—the only barrier against that centralising system which has taken root in other countries. I have always maintained these opinions; my constituents are not landlords; they are not aristocrats; they are not great capitalists ”

“ Decay of Great Ships.—During freedom of trade, small ships would be employed to vent our commodities, and so our great ships, being the guard of the land, would decay.
It is war, more than traffic that maintaineth great ships; and therefore, if any decay grow, it will be chiefly by peace, which the wisdom of the State will have a regard of; but for as much depends of traffic, no doubt the number of smaller ships will grow by this freedom, and especially mariners, whereof the want is greatest, and of whom the smallest vessels are the proper nurseries. ”

“ What is it to the poor man to be told that the Houses of Parliament are extremely tender of property, while the father of the family is forced to sell his cow and his land because the one is not competent to the other; and being deprived of the only motive to industry, squanders the money, contracts bad habits, enlists for a soldier, and leaves the wife and children to the parish? If enclosures were beneficial to the poor, rates would not rise as in other parishes after an act to enclose. The poor in these parishes may say, and with truth, Parliament may be tender of property ”

“ For the clothiers having no utterance of their cloth but to the merchant adventurers, they, by complot among themselves, will buy but at what time, what quality, and what price themselves list; whereby the clothiers are fain often to return with loss, to lay their cloths to pawn, to slack their trade, to the utter ruin of their poor workmen, with their wives and children. ”

“ Sir, I confess that ten years of experience have taught me that avarice and cruelty are not the peculiar and inherent qualities of any one class or occupation—they will ever be found where the means of profit are combined with great and, virtually, irresponsible power—they will be found wherever interest and selfishness have a purpose to serve, and a favourable opportunity. ”

“ There is in England more labour than hands to perform it, and consequently a want of people, not of employment.
2. No man in England, of sound limbs and senses, can be poor merely for want of work.
3. All our workhouses, corporations and charities for employing the poor, and setting them to work, as now they are employed, or any Acts of Parliament, to empower overseers of parishes, or parishes themselves, to employ the poor, except as shall be hereafter excepted, are, and will be public nuisances, mischiefs to the nation which serve to the ruin of families and the increase of the poor. ”

“ The weakness of their argument of experience is plain; for not cloth only, but all other things in the world are risen greatly in price; and in France, where there is no Companies, our kerseys are sold at exceeding good price, and as dear, in proportion, as broad cloths by the Merchant Adventurers. But if it were so, that they kept up our commodities abroad, so do they, by the same skill, foreign commodities at home: so a few rich men do gain by their out-going, and the whole land doth lose much more by their return. They say that they gain little by return of foreign commodities. ”

“ I do not believe that with high prices, wages will necessarily rise in the same ratio. I do not believe that a low price of food necessarily implies a low rate of wages. Neither can I maintain that protection to domestic industry is necessarily good. ”

“ I think I can show that whatever benefit the principle upon which we have begun to act, is fitted to bestow, may by a liberal, fair and efficient application, be carried to an extent far greater than has yet been obtained, an extent equal to every object of great and magnanimous effort, to every purpose of national safety and glory, to every advantage of permanent credit and of increased prosperity. ”

“ Answer.—The Company indeed is as ancient as Thomas of Beckett, their founder, and may still continue. Their restraining of others, which this Bill doth seek to redress, is not so ancient, and was so disallowed by parliament in the twelfth year of Henry the seventh; which Act stands impeached by particular charter, but never by consent of the realm repealed. But in truth this Company, being the spring of all monopolies, and engrossing the grand staple commodities of cloth into so few men's hands, deserves least favour. ”

“ But, by many monstrous anomalies springing out of the constitution of society, the corruptions of government, and the defective education of mankind, we find the bulk of the nation toiling slaves from birth till death—thousands wanting food, or subsisting on the scantiest pittance, having neither time nor means to obtain instruction, much less of cultivating the higher faculties and brightest affections, but forced by their situation to engender enmity, jealousy, and contention, and too often to become the victims of intemperance and crime. ”

“ No scale of income indeed which can be devised will be perfectly free from the objection of inequality, or entirely cut off the possibility of evasion. All that can be attempted is, to approach as near as circumstances will permit to a fair and equal contribution.... The details of a measure which attempts an end so great and important, must necessarily require serious and mature deliberation. At present all that I can pretend to do is, to lay before the committee an outline of the plan which endeavours to combine every thing at which such a measure ought to aim. ”

“ May it please you therefore, for the redressing of these enormities done by the clothiers, to appoint certain grave and discreet persons to view the straitness of works, to assess rates for wages according to the desert of their works, now especially in this great dearth of corn, that the poor artificers of these works of woollen cloth may not perish for want of food, while they are painful in their callings, so shall many families be bound to pray for your worships' happiness and eternal felicity. ”

“ That the attempt to produce in one volume a satisfactory selection of documents to illustrate English Economic History from the Norman Conquest to the Repeal of the Corn Laws can hardly be successful, that we have neglected some subjects—taxation, colonization, and foreign trade—and paid excessive attention to others—social conditions, economic policy, and administration—that every reader will look for a particular document and fail to find it, of all this we are sadly conscious. We are conscious also of a more serious, because less obvious, defect. ”

“ No temporary occasion should force a British subject to part with the last shilling of his little capital, and compel him to descend to a state of wretchedness from which he could never recover, merely that he might be entitled to a casual supply. ”

“ That this meeting of representatives from all the great sections of our manufacturing and commercial population, solemnly declare it to be their conviction that the prosperity of the great staples upon which their capital and industry are employed, is in imminent danger from the operation of the laws which interdict or interfere with the exchange of their productions for the corn and other produce of foreign nations, and thus check our trade, and artificially enhance the price of food in this country ”

“ I must now, according to my promise, show forth some probable reasons that the adventurers in this journey are to take particular profit by the same. It is, therefore, convenient that I do divide the adventurers into two sorts, the noblemen and gentlemen by themselves, and the merchants by themselves. For, as I do hear, it is meant that there shall be one society of the noblemen and gentlemen, and another society of the merchants; and yet not so divided, but that each society may freely and frankly trade and traffic one with the other. ”

“ As to the manner, sir, of raising taxes upon the people, it is a certain maxim that that tax which is the most equal and the most general, is the most just, and the least burthensome. Where every man contributes a small share, a great sum may be raised for the public service, without any man's being sensible of what he pays; whereas a small sum, raised upon a few, lies heavy upon each particular man, and is the more grievous, in that it is unjust ”

“ Opportunity Abroad.—Under our gracious Salamon, a Prince of wisdom and peace, we are like to be in league or amity with all nations; whereby, as there will be greater freedom abroad to trade to all places, so fit to have greater at home for all persons to trade. This alteration of times may make that fit now, which in times of hostility might have seemed unfit. ”

“ I think I could make it apparent to gentlemen that in any war, of the duration of six years, the plan of funding all the expenses to be incurred in carrying it on, would leave at the end of it a greater burden permanently upon the nation than would be sustained, than they would have to incur for the six years only of its continuance, and one year beyond it, provided that they made the sacrifice of a tenth of their income. ”

“ To our lord the King and to all the lords and commons of his realm, make known, as they have often done before these times without being heard, the officers over the moneys of the Tower of London, how for lack of good ordinance no gold or silver comes into England, but of that which is in England a great part has been and from day to day is carried out of the land, and that which remains in England by fault of the deceit of clippers and otherwise is become right feeble, and from day to day such damage increases. ”

“ No custom against an Act of Parliament is valid in law. But the custom claimed by our governors is against the very fundamental constitutions both of all civil societies and of several Acts of Parliament, which ordain that all elections shall be free, chiefly 3 of Ed. I, chap. 5, by virtue of which the people choose all their officers and magistrates in the several parishes and precincts in this kingdom. And if it be according to law in the major, the commonwealth, it must consequently hold in the minor, a particular corporation or civil society of men, as we are, etc. ”

“ The third thing most politicly respected is the intercourse and change of ground to be converted into tillage, keeping a just proportion. For it fareth with the earth as with other creatures that through continual labour grow faint and feeble-hearted, and therefore, if it be so far driven as to be out of breath, we may now by this law resort to a more lusty and proud piece of ground while the first gathers strength, which will be a means that the earth yearly shall be surcharged with burden of her own excess. ”

“ That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital and industry of the country.
That the maxim of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual dealings, is strictly applicable as the best rule for the trade of the whole nation. [Pg 699]
That a policy founded on these principles would render the commerce of the world an interchange of mutual advantages, and diffuse an increase of wealth and enjoyments among the inhabitants of each State. ”

“ Sir, those who contend for the removal of impediments upon the import of a great article of subsistence, such as corn, start with an immense advantage in the argument. The natural presumption is in favour of free and unrestricted importation. ”

“ You have heard that by the free vent and sale of corn, the husbandman's profit is advanced. Then it is showed how every man naturally will follow that wherein he seeth most profit. Therefore men will the gladder occupy husbandry. And the more do occupy husbandry, the more plenty of corn must needs be; and the more plenty of corn there is, thereof better cheap; and also the more will be spared over that that shall suffice the realm; and then, that may be spared in a good year shall bring us again other corn, or else the commodities of other countries necessary for us. ”