Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/90

88 affirmed that there was more wrought for use in families from 1666 to 1688 than had been fabricated in two hundred years before......As to the common people, there is no country in the world where the inferior rank of men are better clothed and fed, and more at their ease, than in this kingdom, nor, consequently, where they propagate faster. As to buildings, during that time not only many stately edifices, both public and private, have been erected, but farm-houses have been kept up; and, besides, from the books of hearth-money, and for other reasons, it appears that of smaller tenements, from 1666 to 1688, there have been about 70,000 new foundations laid, of which the country has not wanted its proper proportion." In 1666 the customs, according to Davenant, were farmed for no more than 390,000l.; but from Michaelmas, 1671, to Michaelmas, 1688, they had yielded to the crown an average annual return of 555,750l. This statement, it will be observed, does not agree with the account given in a preceding page on the authority of Chalmers; but the fact of the increase in the produce of the customs is equally attested by both. "Upon a general view and inspection into the kingdom's state," Davenant calculates that the value of the whole stock of England, by which he explains himself as meaning "the coined silver, coined gold, bullion, wrought plate, rings, &c.; jewels, furniture, apparel, &c.; stock for trade, consumption, &c.; and the live stock in cattle, &c.,"—that is, apparently, everything in the kingdom beside what the lawyers call real property,—was in 1600 about 17,000,000l.; that in thirty years it nearly doubled, and in 1630 was about 28,000,000l.; that in the next thirty years it fully doubled, and in 1660 was about 56,000,000l.; and that from 1660 to 1688 it above half doubled, and was in the last-mentioned year about 88,000,000l. Of this calculation he maintains that "every article may be made out and justified by as plain demonstration as anything of this nature is capable of." The stock of the kingdom, he thinks, would have fully doubled itself in the last period as well as in those of the same length that preceded, had it not been that "a stop was put to our career by the great plague of 1665; by the fire