Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/85

Rh commerce, of great and rapidly growing importance, which was wholly in our own hands. Accordingly, in proof of the general fact of the vast increase of the wealth of the country within the preceding twenty years, Child adduces the following particulars:—"First," he says, "we give generally now one-third more money with apprentices than we did twenty years before. Secondly, notwithstanding the decay of some, and the loss of other trades, yet, in the gross, we ship off now one-third more of our manufactures, and of our tin and lead, than we did twenty years ago. Thirdly, new-built houses in London yield twice the rent which they did before the conflagration in the year 1666; and houses immediately before that fire generally yielded one-fourth more rent than they did twenty years ago. Fourthly, the speedy and costly rebuilding, after that great fire, in London, is a convincing, and to a stranger an amazing, argument of the plenty and late increase of money in England. Fifthly, we have now more than double the number of merchants and shipping that we had twenty years ago. Sixthly, the course of our trade, from the increase of our money, is strangely altered within these twenty years; most payments from merchants and shop-keepers being now made with ready money, whereas formerly the course of our general trade ran at three, six, nine, and eighteen months' time." He admits that people complained, notwithstanding, very greatly of the scarcity of money; but "this humour of complaining," he replies with much truth, "proceeds from the frailty of our natures; it being natural for men to complain of the present, and to commend the times past." "And I can say, with truth," he adds, "upon my own memory, that men did complain as much of the scarcity of money ever since I knew the world as they do now:—nay, the very same persons who now complain of this and commend that time." Plenty or scarcity of money, indeed, has no necessary connexion with a prosperous condition of commerce, or the reverse, any more than plenty or scarcity of leather or of hats. In so far as the fact is general, it is merely a consequence of the existing condition of the