Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/24

22 state of the balances, again, is only another expression for the case of a country which should be continually exporting more gold and silver than it imported, a thing possible only for a country of which the precious metals were among the native products. The wealth of a country, indeed, may increase or may diminish: but its stock of money and its stock of other wealth will increase or will diminish together; and the growth or decline of both will not at all depend upon, or be indicated by, anything like what has been called the balance of trade,—that is, the proportion in which the goods obtained from other countries are paid for by money or by other goods,—but will be occasioned solely by the increasing or diminishing productiveness, as circumstances may vary, of its natural resources and advantages, and of the labour and ingenuity of its inhabitants. The balance of trade may in all cases with perfect safety be left to regulate itself: whatever may happen with other things, that can never go wrong.

In 1604, and again in 1617, the Company of Merchant Adventurers obtained new charters from James, confirming all their former exclusive privileges of exporting the woollen manufactures of England to the Netherlands and Germany, with the reservation only of the right of trading within the same limits to the mayor, constables, and fellowship of the Merchants of the Staple—an exception which is said to have soon proved wholly illusory, under the extending influence of the more recent association, who gradually compelled all persons engaged in this trade to submit to their regulations. In fact, the Company of Merchant Adventurers came to comprehend the whole body of English merchants trading to the Low Countries and Germany, a body which, in the latter part of the reign of James, is stated to have amounted to about 4000 individuals. There appear, also, to have been local companies of merchant adventurers established in some of the great towns. Thus, an act of parliament of the year 1606 confirms a charter that had been granted nearly half a century before by Elizabeth, giving to a company of that name of the city of Exeter the exclusive privilege, in