Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/89

Rh, and in the best counties eighteen and twenty years' purchase about 1666, and by the great increase in the produce of the taxes in the reigns of James I. and Charles I. and in the time of the Commonwealth, that the country must have been growing rich from the beginning of the century up to that year. So much, perhaps, would not be disputed by his opponents. But he contends, on the same or similar grounds, that the same progress continued to go on. and in an augmented ratio, after 1666. Since that year, he affirms, the price of land in the best counties had risen from twenty to twenty-six and twenty-seven years' purchase; and elsewhere from fourteen years' purchase to seventeen or eighteen. "From that year," he adds, "there were apparently more improvements made in land than had been known in fifty years before, by enclosing, manuring, taking in of waste ground, and meliorating what was poor or barren; and yet great improvements had been made in the crown-lands during the civil war." He calculates, from the best observations he has been able to make, "by comparing the ancient subsidies with the present aids and taxes on land," that the general rental of England for land, houses, mines, &c. before the country became considerable by trade,—that is to say, about the year 1600,—did not exceed six millions per annum; whereas, in 1688, he takes the rental of the kingdom to have been about fourteen millions. So that, in 1600, the whole land of England at twelve years' purchase was only worth 72,000,000l.; and in 1688, at eighteen years' purchase, was worth 252,000,000l., or three and a-half times as much as before. As for the mercantile shipping of the kingdom, old and experienced merchants all agreed that its tonnage in 1688 was nearly double what it had been in 1666; and it appeared by authentic accounts that the royal navy, which in May, 1666, amounted only to 62,594 tons, was grown to 101,032 tons in December, 1688. We pass over a long calculation and argument about the amount of gold and silver coined at different periods, as tending very little to elucidate the matter in hand. The statement then proceeds:—"As to plate, it may be safely