Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/177

Rh and leaving the labour that would have crone to furnish it free to be employed on something; else (if any such thing is to be found) tor the production of which we are more favourably situated, and which we either require ourselves or can dispose of profitably to some other country. Or even if the article we import be one of mere luxury, still, if we will have it, it is manifestly more economical, for the same reason, to pay money for it to a foreign country than to produce it at home by the expenditure of an amount of labour more than equivalent in value to that money, and which we could employ profitably in some other way. Our author goes on to argue, in regard to the advantages of the East Country trade, that, taking our shipping to amount in all to 500,000 tons, and estimating the freight at 5l. a ton, it might be said, seeing that the freight of all exported goods falls upon the purchasers, that more than a fifth of the 2,500,000l., which might thus be called the annual value of our shipping, was paid by the nations with whom we traded. "Then," he concludes, "we pay the East Country about 200,000l. per annum for our naval stores, which could not be had but from that country, and gain above twice as much by our shipping from other nations. Therefore, though we pay so great an annual balance upon that trade, yet our treasure cannot be said to be exhausted by it: we have such goods in exchange for it as make us very ample amends, and enable us to supply that loss by our other commerce." We may here mention that, early in the reign of Anne, an act was passed "For encouraging the importation of naval stores from her majesty's plantations in America," which, after reciting in the preamble that such stores were then (in 1703) "brought in mostly from foreign parts, in foreign shipping, at exorbitant and arbitrary rates," while they might be provided in a more certain and beneficial manner from the vast tracts of land lying near the sea, and upon navigable rivers, in the colonies and plantations in America, which were at first settled, and were still maintained and protected at a great expense of the treasure of this kingdom, ordered that