Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 3.djvu/626

612 afterwards. He encouraged and extended our colonies, especially by the acquisition of Jamaica, and the trade with the West Indies and American colonies added increasingly, during the period now under review, to our commercial wealth and navy. The writer of "The World's Mistake in Oliver Cromwell," published in the "Harleian Miscellany," says:—"When this tyrant, or protector, as some call him, turned out the Long Parliament in April 1653, the kingdom had arrived at the highest pitch of trade it ever knew. The riches of the nation showed itself in the high value of land and of all our native commodities, which are the certain marks of opulence." Besides this, the great quantity of land thrown into the hands of small proprietors, from time to time, and from a succession of causes, ever since the great breaking up of the Roman church and all its monasteries and convents by Henry VIII., was every day telling more markedly on the wealth and spirit of the people. We have just noticed what a powerful body the yeomanry had become; and, from the same causes, a large accession of capital had flowed into trade. The culture of these divided lands was enormously increased; instead of lying vast deserts and hunting grounds, they now were become fertile farms. The internal resources of the country were rapidly and constantly developing themselves; and, from the quiet transfer of the taxation from the aristocracy to the people at large, it had become the interest of the monarchs, if they did little positively to accelerate the growth of national wealth, at least to leave in freedom the capital-increasing exertions of the population. The more the people traded abroad, the greater were the proceeds of the customs; the more they consumed, the greater the proceeds of the excise; now the chief items of the royal revenue. All the sources of national wealth originated in the Long Parliament and the commonwealth, for the transfers of the customs and excise were first made then, and only resumed after the restoration.

Old London Water Carriers, copied from an old Engraving.

We may now notice the rapid growth of these items of revenue. In the first year of Charles I.'s reign—namely, 1660,—the proceeds of the customs were £361,356; in the last year of James's reign, 1688, they were £781,987. Thus, in twenty-eight years the customs had more than doubled themselves. We have not the same complete accounts of the proceeds of the excise, imports and exports, for the same period; but those which we have show the same progressive ratio. In 1663, the imports and exports together amounted to £6,038,831; in 1669, or only six years afterwards, they were £6,259,413; and, since 1613, they had risen up to that amount from £4,628,586. This showed a steady increase of consumption in the nation. During this time the imports exceeded the exports considerably; demonstrating the fact that the internal wealth was greater than the export of goods; but the balance of trade gradually adjusted itself, and, in 1699, the excess of exports over imports was £1,147,660; showing that even exportable articles of manufacture, of raw produce, or of commodities the growth of our colonies and settlements, had continued to increase. The proceeds of the excise in 1660, when Charles became possessed of it, amounted only to about one million; but continued to increase so rapidly that in little more than a century it netted ten millions. The value of land, and of all kinds of property, rose in proportion. Davenant, in his "Discourses on Trade," shows that the value of the whole rental of England, in 1660, was but £6,000,000; in 1688, it was £14,000,000. So that, in 1660, the whole land of England, at twelve years' purchase, was only worth £72,000,000; but, in 1688