Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/221

 duties, and kindred topics. Tin and wool were, at this time, the staple of the English export trade, for England, it is to be remembered, was not then a manufacturing country to any very large extent. The trade in wool was a practical monopoly. In consequence, Parliament had constantly been able to exact an export duty of 100 per cent, on the sack of ordinary raw wool without checking the demand or impoverishing the husbandman, the burden falling on the consumer, who had no other market to fly to. The manufacture of wool was still in its infancy. Holland was the great seat of textile industries, and it had been proposed in influential quarters—under the influence of the example of France—to try to crush the manufacturers of Holland, by prohibiting the export of English wool thither and the import of the Dutch manufactured article, so as to compel the wool to be manufactured into cloth at home.

With the extreme prohibitory school Sir William hardly condescends to argue seriously. He examines the whole question of prohibition by the light of the examples of the prohibition of the export of money. This he shows is practically impossible, probably alluding to the experience acquired from the East India trade. The revenue officers, he says, had always been bribed, and the result was that the price of the articles bought with the money had thereby been raised to the consumer. If, however, a particular branch of trade will not bear this charge, then he points out it is lost altogether, to the injury of the nation and the prohibition of so much foreign trade; with this difference, that the discretion of what branch of trade shall be curtailed is left to the merchants. If a merchant, wishing to bring in Spanish wine and coffee berries, found that he must pay 40,000l. abroad in money to complete the transaction, and was prohibited from sending that amount abroad, he would curtail his business in one article or the other, according to his own convenience; while at least, under a direct sumptuary law on particular commodities, the State, and not a private individual, has the