Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/186

184 were 91,302l.; in 1699, 86,309l.; from 1701 to 1703 they never reached so high as 77,000l.; from 1704 to 1706 they were when at the highest under 58,000l.; and in the year 1706 they had fallen to 50,309l. The imports into Scotland from England, again, were never higher than 87,536l., which they were in 1704; but they were more generally between 50,000l. and 60,000l.; in 1705 they were only 50,035l. Except that she obtained a share in the Scottish fisheries, which for a long time she took very little advantage of, the chief direct commercial benefit of which the Union put England in possession was merely the increase of this intercourse with Scotland, which was now thrown as fully open to her manufacturers and merchants as Yorkshire; but Scotland, which had no colonies or distant dependencies of her own, her solitary attempt at Darien having not only failed in itself, but well nigh bankrupted the mother country, was at once admitted to a participation in all the colonial commerce of England, in so far as it was free to the subjects of the latter country themselves, and more especially to that both with the American plantations and with Ireland. The market of England, of course, was also opened to her for the sale of any native produce or manufactures she might have to export which suited the wants or the tastes of that part of the island. "By this union," writes Anderson, about half a century afterwards, "Scotland's coarse woollen stuffs and stockings, and her more valuable linen manufactures, now of many various, beautiful, and ingenious kinds, have a prodigious vent, not only in England, but for the American plantations." He also notices the consumption to a large extent of the black cattle and peltry of Scotland by their southern neighbours—a branch of trade which has continued to increase down to our own day. Another economical advantage which the Scots derived from this political incorporation with England was the substitution of the coinage of the latter country for their own greatly depreciated currency. The Scottish gold and silver money