COMMERCIAL PREDOMINANCE OF THE DUTCH. 299

distant and hitherto unknown climes. Attempts, however, to form settlements in America, did not succeed in Elizabeth's reign; but the cod-fisheries of Newfoundland, as well as the whale and seal-fisheries of Greenland and Spitzbergen, were successfully cultivated, and a beginning was also made in the less laudable pursuit of the African slave-trade.

Holland, Embden, Hamburg, Bremen, and other free cities, were now the great depôts and carrying states of Europe. It was the practice of these mercantile communities to transport the produce of the Levant, of the East and West Indies, of France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy, to the northern states of Denmark, Sweden, Poland, and Russia, bringing back corn and other bulky merchandise, which they stored up to supply the wants of the rest of the world. Amsterdam was never without a store of 700,000 quarters of foreign corn; and it is said that a dearth of one year in England, France, Spain, Portugal, or Italy, sufficed to enrich Holland for seven years after. The indefatigable Dutch outstripped all their rivals. The ordinary trade between Holland and England employed about 500 ships, but not a tenth part were English. The Dutch sent nearly 1000 ships every year to the north coast of Europe, laden chiefly with the wines of France. and Spain; England, with equal advantages of nautical position, had not one ship employed in that trade. Our navy was in its infancy. Of ships of war or commerce we had few of large size, and these were bought of Hanseatic shipwrights. It was found, by an estimate taken by Lord Admiral Clinton in 1582, that the merchants could supply the royal navy with 14,295 seamen, and 1293 ships, of which only 219 were above eighty tons burden. Ships then were little more than sloops, or at most brigs; and a far greater force and tonnage of steam craft could now be mustered.

As the English at this time were behind several of their neighbours in the art of ship-building, artificial aids were resorted to for its encouragement. Queen Elizabeth commenced giving bounties to the builders of such ships as carried 100 tons. The practice was continued by her successor, and five shillings a ton paid for every vessel above 200 tons. These notices attest the increasing size of merchant ships through an active maritime period. It was the beginning of a policy which enabled the trading ships of England, under the Commonwealth, to enter the lists in the fierce struggle with the Dutch for naval superiority.

During the entire of the pacific reign of King James, and through the perturbed period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, the naval and industrial progress of the country continued unabated. On the recal of Charles II. the energies of the people, which had been dissipated but not diminished in the political strife of the preceding twenty years, became concentrated in the various operations of peace. The several manufactures and new productions of husbandry that were introduced from abroad before 1688, not only formed a new epoch, but evinced a vigorous application to the useful arts in the intermediate period. The common highways were enlarged and repaired, while turnpikes were placed on the great northern road, in the counties of Hertford, Huntingdon, and Cambridge. Rivers were deepened for the purposes of internal navigation. Foreign trade was increased by opening new markets, and by withdrawing the alien. duties, which had obstructed the export of native manufactures. The command of East India commodities extended our traffic with Turkey, Italy, Spain, and Portugal; and the new branches of commerce opened with the American plantations were wholly in our hands.

2

WOOLLEN AND LINEN MANUFACTURES.

301

Before the Orange revolution the principal textile manufactures had obtained firm footing in the kingdom. The woollen manufacture had extended over the chief districts of the country. Under the Tudors, Bridgewater, Taunton, Chard, and various towns of Gloucester, Wilts, and Somerset, were famous for their broadcloths. The cloths of Worcester, Evesham, Kidderminster, Bromwich, and Coventry, were in good repute, and also those of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex. Yorkshire, since so celebrated for its woollens, was then chiefly limited in its industry to coverlets or coarse kerseys made for exportation. Manchester was famous for rugs and friezes. In both Lancashire and Cheshire were made what the natives called cottons, but which were woollen fabrics, extensively manufactured in Wales. These various sorts of cloth were mostly sold at stalls in fairs, and in the open market by hawkers and pedlars, and other itinerant traders, whose vocation was the foundation of the existing class of merchant-princes and manufacturers.

A kindred branch of the woollen manufacture was that of worsted, in which, by different processes, wool is wrought into various fabrics. It was so called from Worsted, now an inconsiderable village of Norfolk, where the manufacture first began under Edward II. The eastern districts of the kingdom, especially Norwich and its neighbourhood, continued to be the chief seat of this industry until late years, during which they have been surpassed by the thriving marts of Bradford and Halifax.

The prosperity of the linen manufacture is of more recent date. Up to 1688 the finer linens were mostly obtained from Germany, and those of a coarser kind were only made in England, chiefly by industrious housewives for family consumption. Attempts were made to force the cultivation of hemp and flax ; but they were

not successful enough to make linen, like woollen, a staple branch of national industry.

The manufacture of Silk appears to have been introduced into England in the fourteenth century. The throwsters of the metropolis were formed into a fellowship in 1562; but it was not till the accession of the Stuarts that the manufacture attracted marked attention. A great impulse was given to this manufacture by a proclamation of King James for encouraging the planting of mulberry-trees. He said the silk-worm might be multiplied as well in England as in France; and above 10,000 plants were sent into each county for sale at nominal prices. Most of the old mulberry-trees are supposed to have been planted in consequence of this proclamation.*

At the period of the Revolution of 1688 the advantages of trade and the manufacturing arts had become so apparent, that they had almost ceased to be degrading. The change of manners they had wrought, and the intermixture of the higher and middle ranks by marriages, induced the gentry, and even the younger branches of the nobility, Mr. Chalmers says, "to bind their sons apprentices to merchants, and thereby to shed lustre on pursuits before deemed only gainful; to invigorate traffic by their greater capitals, and to extend its operations by superior knowledge and connection with powerful interests." A progress was thus made towards the general amalgamation of classes and interests, by which harmony of parts and concentration of purpose the country was enabled to advance, with accelerated force, towards its destined goal of commercial and industrial preeminence.

A more detailed account is given of the spread of manufacturing industry in. the author's "History and Political Philosophy of the Productive Classes," 4th edit., published by Messrs. Chambers.

CHAPTER XVI.

POPULATION, RICHES, AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF ENGLAND IN 1688.

Comparative Rates of National Progress. — Mistakes from Identity of Names.-Amount of Population and Incomes, Past and Present.— Classification of Families and their Incomes in 1688.- Coincidences between the existing State of France and England at the Revolution. -Number and Size of Farms. —Predominance of Agricultural Industry. Parallelism between Life in Ireland and England. Low Standard of Social Life, and its Causes. - Little Progress in Science, Literature, or the Useful Arts. Variation in Prices.Absence of Journalism. — Coffee Houses and Political Clubs. Parliamentary Debates. Circulating and Itinerant Libraries.

It is with the beginning of communities as with the beginning of organic life, the first germs of existence are lost or barely perceptible, and progress is slow and obscure; but after the early stages of gestation have been perfected, and distinct manifestations of type and vitality have appeared, the rate of growth becomes accelerated. Corresponding laws of development seem to govern the advancement of nations. England in her first origin is untraceable, lost in the womb of time; but she has always been progressive, though at an unequal pace, as the preceding inquiry has tended to establish. At the close of the first five hundred years, the Britons imberited the impressions left by their Roman masters: upon these, in the next five hundred years, were engrafted the free institutions of the Anglo-Saxons. From both these sources the accumulated gains were not considerable to have been purchased by one thousand years of experience.