Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/173

Rh our plantations, with those who are abroad in Turkey, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Holland, Germany, Russia, Norway, the Baltic, Africa, and the East Indies, I am of opinion we have, at least, two-thirds as many as all the rest of Europe put together, if not more." The account, at least, shows us the foreign countries in which English merchants were at this time resident.

The following passage on the comparative prices of labour and habits of the labouring classes in France and England is very interesting:—"The French did always outdo us in price of labour: their common people live upon roots, cabbage, and other herbage; four of their large provinces subsist entirely upon chestnuts; and the best of them eat bread made of barley, millet, Turkey and black corn; so that their wages used to be small in comparison with ours. But of late years, their crown pieces being made of the same value as ours, and raised from sixty to one hundred sols, and the manufacturers, servants, soldiers, day-labourers, and other working people earning no more sols or pence by the day than they did formerly, the price of labour is thereby so much lessened, that one may affirm for truth they have generally their work done for half the price we pay for ours. For, although provisions be as dear at Paris as they are at London, it is certain that in most of their provinces they are very cheap, and that they buy beef and mutton for half the price we pay for it here. But the price of meat and wheat doth little concern the poor manufacturers, as they generally drink nothing but water, and at best a sort of liquor they call beuverage (which is water passed through the husks of grapes after the wine is drawn off); they save a great deal upon that account; for it is well known that our people spend half of their money in drink. The army is a notorious instance how cheap the French can live; it enables their king to maintain 300,000 men with the same money we maintain 112,500; their pay being five sols a day (which is exactly threepence English), and our soldiers' pay is eightpence. However, they subsist upon that small allowance; and, if there be the same disproportion between our manufactures and theirs as there is