Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/185

Rh unnecessary to extract: the rags, it is stated, which are the main ingredient, were formerly cast away, and thrown to the dunghill, "but are now gathered with great care by poor people, who get honestly their livelihood by it, and would otherwise beg their bread; this employs abundance of hands." There is no mention of any importation of rags from abroad. The consumption of paper in Great Britain, the writer thinks, was not greater than it had been in the reign of King William; he rates it at about 400,000 reams per annum, of which the 120 fats within sixty miles of the metropolis, making each on an average eight reams a day, furnished nearly three-fourths, and those in Yorkshire and Scotland, and our importations from Holland and Italy, the remaining 100,000 reams.

The Union of Scotland and England, which took place in the reign of Anne—an event important to both countries in every point of view—laid a foundation for the extension of the commerce of Scotland particularly, which was not one of its least important consequences. Till now the two kingdoms, though under the rule of the same sovereign, regarded each the other as a foreign state, commercially as well as in respect to most of their political relations. The privileges of foreign trade enjoyed by the one were withheld from the other; and their interchange of commodities with each other was extremely inconsiderable. An account has been published from the books of the Inspector-General of Customs of the value of the merchandise received by the one from the other by sea during the ten years preceding the Union, from which it appears that (independently of the little that might be conveyed by land-carriage) the amount of all the goods that passed between the two countries in a year much oftener fell short of than exceeded the small sum of 150,000l. In 1698 England imported from Scotland merchandise to the value of 124,835l., and in 1700 to that of 130,087l.; but with the exception of these two years the English imports never reached 100,000l. And they went on decreasing almost every year: in 1697 they