Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/12

10 a dearth of wine, fish, or corn, it was the custom of the Dutch immediately to load fifty or a hundred vessels with the particular commodity in request, and to dispatch them to all the ports of this kingdom, to reap the harvest of the high prices. In a recent dearth of corn Raleigh affirms that the merchants of Embden, Hamburgh, and Holland had in this way carried away, in a year and a half, from the ports of Southampton, Exeter, and Bristol alone, nearly 200,000l.; and he thinks that, from the whole of the kingdom, they could not have obtained less than ten times that sum. The practice of these thoroughly commercial states was to monopolize, as far as they could, the transport of the produce of all other countries,—of Turkey and the East and West Indies, as well as of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy; and, carrying this merchandise to Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and other northern parts, to bring back thence corn and other bulky commodities, which they stored up to supply the wants of England and the rest of the world. Amsterdam was never without a store of 700,000 quarters of corn, none of it of home growth; and it was remarked that a dearth of one year in England, France, Spain, Portugal, or Italy sufficed to enrich Holland for seven years after. Raleigh contends, nevertheless, that, if the proper methods were taken, England was much better situated than Holland for a general store-house.

He next proceeds to compare the trade in fish of the Low Countries and the adjacent petty states with that carried on by England. The most productive fisheries in the world were upon the coasts of the British islands; yet at this time, while the Hollanders sent to the four great towns on the Baltic—Koningsberg, Elbing, Stettin, and Dantzic—620,000l. worth of herrings every year, England exported to those places none at all; nor any to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the ports of Riga, Revel, Narva, and other parts of Livonia, to which the Dutch sent yearly to the value of 170,000l.; and scarcely 500l. worth to Russia, to which the Dutch sent 27,000l. worth; and none at all to Staden, Hamburgh,