British goods

“ Therefore, though we pay so great an annual balance upon that trade, yet our treasure cannot be said to be exhausted by it: we have such goods in exchange for it as make us very ample amends, and enable us to supply that loss by our other commerce. ”

“ The merchants, therefore, who came from other countries were now reduced to the necessity of either directly bartering their commodities for the produce of the kingdom, or, if they sold them for money in the first instance, of investing the proceeds in other goods before they could be permitted to return home. ”

“ The effect of this law, in so far as it was enforced or obeyed, could only have been to add to the general distress, by embarrassing more or less all classes of persons that had been ever so remotely connected with the foreign trade, and above all others the chief body of producers in the kingdom. If the wool was not to go out of the country, much wealth both in money and in goods would be prevented from coming in, and all the branches of industry which that wealth had hitherto contributed to sustain and feed would suffer depression. ”

“ Very few direct notices of the state of trade in this reign have come down to us. Licences are recorded to have been granted to the merchants of various foreign countries to bring their goods to England, on due payment of the quinziéme, which would thus appear to have been a customs duty, payable probably both on the import and export of commodities. The Flemings were the chief foreign traders that resorted to the country, and next to them, apparently, the French. ”

“ In this manner the Upper Country Trade is chiefly carried on by men of low circumstances, destitute of every means to pay their debts when their trade fails; and if it should be under great restraints or obstructed a few years the consequences will prove ruinous to the commercial party of this Province and very hurtful to the merchants of London, shippers of goods to this country, besides the loss of so valuable branch of trade in Great Britain. ”

“ The East Country trade, "We buy," it is observed, "hemp, pitch, tar, and all sorts of naval stores from the East Country. Unless we did this, we could not fit out a single ship to sea. The goods we send to that country are by no means sufficient to even the account between us; we are forced to pay the balance in gold and silver, and this, as I have heard, amounts to 200,000l. per annum. Shall we be said, then, to lose so great an annual sum by our East Country trade? ”

“ Of these things a great part were used in the manufactured goods we exported, and to that extent they contributed to the employment of our people and the improvement of our lands. "But a very great part of our returns from Spain was money, for the overbalance of our manufactures sent thither; and this undoubtedly was so much added to the prosperity and happiness of this nation." 3. Italy, our exportations to which were made good to us by returns in oil, wine, thrown and raw silk, wrought silk, currants, paper, drugs, &c., and the rest in money. ”

“ Those who can best succeed in commanding those markets, have the best prospect of outstripping the others in the career of commerce, navigation, manufactures, wealth, and power.
This is seen and felt by British statesmen, and has opened their eyes to the errors which they have committed. The question now with them is, how shall it be counteracted? What has been done cannot be undone. The question is, by what means can Great Britain regain and keep a superiority in tropical cultivation, commerce, and influence? ”

“ 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. ”

“ THE outlines of British commerce have been heretofore sketched; and the interest of each part, in particular, and of the whole empire conjointly, have been shewn to be the principles by which the grand system is poized and balanced. Whoever will take upon himself the trouble of reading and comparing the several acts of trade, which respect the colonies, will be convinced, that the cherishing their trade, and promoting their interest, have been the objects of parliamentary attention, equally with those of Britain. ”

“ As conscious empire-builders on a world-wide scale the French were also putting their ideas into practice when England was still thinking commercially in such matters. England as a whole always does think in pounds, shillings, and pence, and in empire-building possessions have mainly been added to the British Empire with the idea of increasing its trade. ”

“ However England may regard us, we need only view her as a splendid example of a nation great and powerful by the productiveness of her soil and mines, the ability of her people, and the liberalizing spirit of her commerce. In her present external condition, in her vast navy, her extensive commerce, in all save her insulated and secure position, we may read our own near destiny. Grasping, ambitious and powerful the British race certainly is ”

“ Anyhow, whatever the opposition of cities and corporations, the nation was benefited by the foreign merchants. Thankful, indeed, might England have been for the Lombards, who brought hither money and merchandise, banking and insurance; for the Flemings, who, driven by intestine dissension, found refuge on British soil, and became the founders of the woollen manufacture; and for the Huguenots, who brought with them the silk manufacture. ”

“ The balance of trade, then, was what is commonly called in favour of England, unreasonably enough, as if nothing were wealth but gold and silver. The country at this time did not really become richer by exchanging its produce for money, than it would have done by taking foreign produce or manufactures in exchange for it. Nor, even if we should hold money to be the only true wealth, could it have accumulated in the country with more rapidity or to a greater amount under the one system than under the other ”

“ It follows that Great Britain can treble her yearly output, her yearly income, and her national wealth by Americanising her industries. The Americanisation of the British industries has already begun. ”

“ That Your Majesty’s British subjects residing in this province have set examples and given every encouragement in their power to promote industry, are the principal importers of British manufactures, carry on three-fourths of the trade of this country, annually return a considerable revenue into Your Majesty’s exchequer in Great Britain ”

“ Britain, of trade the chosen mart,
The seat of industry and art,—
May never luxury or minister
Cast over thee a mantle sinister!
Still let thy fleet and cannon's roar
Affright thy foes and guard thy shore.
When Continental States contend,
Be thou to them a common friend.
Imperial rule may sway their land;
Here Commerce only takes her stand,
Diffusing good o'er all the world.
The flag of Commerce, where unfurled,
Stands with fair plenty in her train,
And wealth, to bless her bright domain.
For where the merchant sails to trade
Fair is the face of Nature made. ”

“ I must confess England breeds in its own womb the principal supporters of its present splendour, and nourisheth with its own milk the commodities that give both lustre and life to the continuance of this trade, which I pray may neither ever decay, nor yet have the least diminution. But England being naturally seated in another corner of the world, and herein bending under the weight of too ponderous a burden, cannot possibly always and for ever find a vent for all those commodities that are seen to be daily imported and brought within the compass of so narrow a circuit ”

“ The whole people, save a few of the “great estates” and mighty men, must go simply clad in honest goods of English make, and so save themselves from waste, and English workers from poverty. As to the long dispute about admitting foreigners to trade in England, in which the King and the people had ever been in strong opposition, that matter was now more and more regulated according to the desires of the traders. ”

“ When the Normans first came over, however, they found England a country possessed of considerable capital, or accumulated wealth, and also, as it would seem, of a flourishing foreign commerce, which had, no doubt, chiefly grown up in the long and, for the greater part, tranquil reign of the Confessor. ”

“ This step was a natural sequence to the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, and the glorious dawn of Free Trade, by which every British subject was permitted to purchase whatever he required in the best and cheapest market, and so was able to work at a moderate wage, and to have continuous employment. Thus Great Britain, with few natural advantages, became the great workshop of the world and controlled every market upon the globe in which her manufactures were not excluded by the barrier of Protection. ”

“ The production of raw material within the empire increased at a rate which can only be appreciated by a careful study of figures, and by a comparison of the total of these figures with the total figures of the world. The tropical and temperate possessions of the empire include every field of production which can be required for the use of man. There is no main staple of human food which is not grown; there is no material of textile industry which is not produced. The British empire gives occupation to more than one-third of the persons employed in mining and quarrying in the world. ”

“ If there be any property covered for Great Britain, I have every reason to believe, from facts I will state to the committee, that it appertains almost exclusively to some British merchants, lately adopted citizens of the United States, for they take good care to keep all their [461] business in their own hands. They are the honest merchants who own the honest vessels we have heard so much about, and they are engaged in exporting cotton, tobacco, and other produce of our country. ”

“ By our greatly increasing the demand and consumption of British manufactures, their price is considerably raised of late years; the advantage is clear profit to Britain, and enables its people better to pay great taxes ”

“ The most important sole market which Great Britain had acquired by her wars was the seaboard of North America. To support the finances of the chartered company, the British Parliament determined on taxing the inhabitants of her sole market, and the result as you know was the war of American Independence. ... The colonial or sole-market system was based on a strict reciprocity. The English Government admitted colonial produce into the English markets at differential duties, or prohibited the produce of foreign nations and foreign colonies altogether. ”

“ England’s industry did the work. It must also be observed that the capital wealth of Great Britain had immeasurably increased, and had assumed ever more and more the aspect of an octopus sucking the life-blood of the other European nations. The more numerous the wars which those nations were compelled to wage for England, the more crushing did England’s superiority in this respect become. Ever less and less grew the competition capable of exerting an influence either on the selling or on the purchasing prices of English industry. ”

“ Had the views, desires, and habits of mankind, and especially of the inhabitants of Europe and the United States, continued as they were fifty years ago, it is absolutely impossible that one half of the goods manufactured in Great Britain could have been disposed of; and unless these additional and enlarged views, desires, and habits, had been accompanied with commensurate means of gratifying them, our manufactures and commerce could not have advanced as they have done. ”

“ The present period was an age of great revolutions and remarkable progress in the commerce and general industry, not only of this country, but of the world. But in England especially the sixteenth century is distinguished from the fifteenth almost as the day is from the night, in respect to the activity and advancement of the nation in every field of exertion and enterprise where those accumulated results are to be achieved that constitute civilization. ”

“ The job, however, is easily performed, for in these parcels there are neither gold, silver, jewels, pictures, nor books—they contain neither covering for the body nor consolation for the mind—they belong neither to the vegetable nor to the mineral kingdom—in short, they are simply composed of good, plain, honest eatables, bequeathed by British hearts, addressed by British hands to British stomachs of all classes of society. ”

“ In England the land has been sacrificed to manufactures; by adopting Free Trade it made a bargain with other countries in these terms—that it would manufacture iron goods and cloth in exchange for food. ”

“ Of such increase as has been shown in the total value of British exports dining the last quarter of a century, much more than half must be set down to the vast development of our coal shipments. But England must stand or fall as a manufacturing nation. ”