Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/102

100 traffic; and in fresh memory the like fall from eight to six in the hundred by a late constant practice hath found the like success, to the general contentment of this nation, as is visible by several improvements." In Scotland the reduction was not made till 1672. To the reduction of interest to six per cent. Sir Josiah Child, in his "Brief Observations concerning Trade and Interest of Money," first published in 1688, ascribes the most important effects in the augmentation of the national wealth; and, although his notion upon this point is a mere fallacy, some of the facts which he mentions, and with regard to which his authority is unquestionable, however much he may be mistaken as to the cause to which he would trace them, are curious. When he wrote, he asserts, there were more men to be found upon the Exchange of London worth ten thousand pounds than were worth one thousand when the reduction was first made by the Rump parliament. He adds, that five hundred pounds with a daughter, sixty years before, was esteemed a larger portion than two thousand pounds now; that gentlewomen in former times esteemed themselves well clothed in a serge gown, which a chambermaid would now be ashamed to be seen in; and that, besides the great increase of rich clothes, plate, jewels, and household furniture, there were a hundred coaches now kept for one that was kept formerly.

Of the great chartered associations which in earlier times used to monopolize the commerce to different foreign regions, the East India Company is the only one which demands any particular notice in the present period. While the others, as trade outgrew the need of such shelter and propping, were gradually losing their exclusive privileges and sinking towards decrepitude and insignificance, it was fast surmounting the impediments of various kinds, both abroad and at home, that had hitherto entangled its progress, and becoming every day more prosperous and more firmly established. Although the charter the Company had obtained from Cromwell in 1657 was not yet expired, it was thought advisable, in the change that all things had undergone, to get a new one from the restored king; and they were accordingly