Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 1.djvu/130

128 was accustomed to maintain that foreign commerce was unnecessary, the produce of the country being fully sufficient to supply all the wants of its inhabitants. And so no doubt it was, and would be still, on this principle of rigidly eschewing ail superfluities; but that is the principle of the stationary and savage state, not of civilization and progressive improvement.

The prohibition against the importation of foreign cloth, however, appears to have been soon repealed. In 1271, when disputes broke out between Henry and the Countess of Flanders, we find it renewed in terms which imply that the trade had for some time previous been carried on as usual. This second suspension, also, was of short duration; and on various subsequent occasions, on which the attempt was made to break off the natural commercial intercourse between the English producers and the Flemish manufacturers, the result was the same; the inconvenience was found to be so intolerable to both countries that it never was submitted to for more than a few months or weeks.

Absurd regulations, however, were from time to time imposed on the trade carried on by foreigners, the temper and principle of which would, if carried out, have led to its complete extinction, and which, half measures as they were, could only have had the effect of diminishing its natural advantages. In 1275, for instance, an order was issued by Edward I., obliging all foreign merchants to sell their goods within forty days after their arrival. If foreigners continued to resort to the country in the face of the additional risks created by this law,—risks of inadequate returns if they complied with it, of detection and punishment if they attempted to evade it,—we may be certain they exacted a full equivalent in the shape of higher prices for their goods; or, if they failed to do this, they must soon have been forced to give up the trade altogether, for there was no other way by which it could be made to yield its usual profits.

In the year 1290 the bigotry and rapacity of Edward I. inflicted what must have proved a severe blow upon the commerce of the kingdom by the sudden expulsion of the