Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/542

522 be grown into such a costliness and chargeableness of living and expense of foreign commodities, a great part not needful, that the trial being made by the King's customs, you shall find that we spend and consume within this realm such sums and quantities of foreign commodities that all the wool, cloth, tin, lead, leather, coal, and other merchandise to be carried out of this realm, is not able to countervail, pay, or recompense for the said merchandise brought into the realm by one quarter part at least. And so long as the bringing in of superfluous commodities shall exceed in value the richness of our commodities carried out, so long and so much must you needs grant me, that our realm is impoverished, either in money or otherwise. That man which spendeth in a year more than the stynte of his lands and travail of his body doth gain, must needs decay and grow into debt, as doth our whole realm in this point. And yet of late days I understand that there is a restraint of lead not to be carried out of England, which, whosoever did invent, studied as much the hurt of the commonwealth as he that invented that no coals should be conveyed from Newcastle into any foreign port but in a French ship, which, although it is but a coal matter, is such a hindrance to a part of our commonwealth as is worthy of redress.

'And, forasmuch as I have spoken of coals, I will say a little more. If it were well-considered what was to be done in the coals of England for the benefit of our land, and an order therein set to the most commodity of this realm, it should be found much more beneficial to