Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/156

154 more than it was then: in 1831, for instance, it was only about 33,000,000 lbs. The last class of our exports to Holland which Davenant examines is that of our East India goods. He begins by observing, that Amsterdam and Rotterdam were then in a manner the magazines for the wrought silk, Bengal stuffs mixed with silk or herba of the manufacture of Persia, China, or East India, and for all calicoes painted, dyed, printed, or stained in those parts; which commodities, since their use had been prohibited here, were chiefly sent to Holland, that country taking off, on the average of the four years from 1702 to 1705 inclusive, above 94,916l. worth of them annually. He apprehends that the Dutch in this way drew into their pockets the greater part of the profits of our East India trade; and that such would continue to be the case so long as our own merchants were, by the law preventing the home consumption of the commodities in question, confined to that one foreign market. As for the supposed interference of these India fabrics with our woollen manufactures abroad, he does not think there is much or anything in that objection. "For these last thirty years," he observes, "in which the East India trade has been carried on to the highest pitch, we are not decreased in the manufactures from long wool, but rather the contrary, and to a large degree nor does it appear to me, from any observation I can make, that East India goods have hurt the general traffic of our woollen manufactures in foreign markets; these silks and stuffs seem rather a commodity calculated for the middle rank of people; they are too vulgar to be worn by the best sort, and too costly for the lowest rank; so that the use of them remains in the middle rank, who (the luxuries of the world still increasing) would wear European silks if they had not East India stuffs and painted calicoes, whereby the vent of our woollen goods abroad would