Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/83

Rh of capital, might more truly be said to be a consequence of such accumulation; for if the rate of profit, and consequently the demands of borrowers, should continue the same, the rate of interest would be brought down by the mere growth of disposable capital. But, notwithstanding this fundamental mistake of the book on a theoretical point, it may, from the position and opportunities of the author, be safely taken as a trustworthy authority in regard to most of the statements as to matters of fact contained in it. The branches of English commerce which Child speaks of as having been most extended in his time are the trade with Spain and Portugal and with the East Indies. In his preface he asserts that, since the year 1640, our exports of native commodities to the Peninsula had been more than trebled. He was himself a director of the East India Company, and he strenuously insists upon the great national profits and advantages of the trade with that region in opposition to the outcry raised against it, principally on the ground of its carrying a large balance of specie out of the country,—the simple test by which the common prejudice of the time at once decided whether any trade was profitable or the reverse. Child, without having very clear notions on the subject, is much inclined to qualify the vulgar doctrine on the balance of trade generally; but in this particular case his chief argument is, that, although the imports of the company were in great part paid for in money, the same money, or rather a larger sum, would otherwise have had to be paid to the Dutch for the same commodities. We should have had to buy from them the saltpetre necessary for the making of gunpowder, as well as our pepper and calicoes, for which they would have made us pay as dear as they did for nutmegs, cinnamon, cloves, and mace, of which they then had the monopoly; or, if we did not use calicoes, we should have been obliged to resort to foreign linens. The Company, he states, then employed from thirty-five to forty sail of the most war-like mercantile ships of the kingdom, with from sixty to a hundred men in each: and, besides supplying the country with saltpetre, pepper, indigo, calicoes, and