Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n
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Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
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A29354
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Essays on trade and navigation in five parts / by Sir Francis Brewster, Kt.
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Brewster, Francis, Sir, d. 1704.
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1695
(1695)
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Wing B4434; ESTC R1968
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72,012
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152
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it might have been thought a Wisp of Straw of my own lighting but I place it as I find it for I leave nothing out of all I could ever hear Objected against the Act and therefore bring in this though I think there needs no Answer more than to say There are no Ships to bring away the Product of a Country and we send none to fetch them it is a strange Indication that we have no use of their Commodities or our Ships are better employed and that we want Ships and Men for such poor Trades which nothing will force us to increase but the Act of Navigation it being a certain Maxim in Trade and Navigation That whilst there is room in the easie and most profitable Part none will run into the poor and more Laborious And we not having Seamen enough to manage our profitable and easie Navigation as I have before mentioned is one reason of the decay of our rougher and poor Navigation which was wisely provided for in this Act That all Foreign Import of Fish Oyl Whale Finn c. should pay double Allience Duty This was intended to give us advantage above Foreigners and would no doubt be a good encouragement if we had our other Trades supplied to bring Seamen into the Fishing Trade but having lost the Trades for want of Ships and Seamen that therefore we should sit down with the loss and take no course to retrieve it because at first we cannot bring in these Commodities as Cheap as Foreigners can is with the Sloathful to say A Lyon is in the way But we had when this Act was made better Resolutions and knew then and so may now That it is better for the Kingdom to Pay twenty Shillings to their own Men than Fifteen to Strangers and by doing that for a time we may regain those Trades and manage them on as good terms as any other This I believe will be thought sufficient cause for the supporting the Act as it was for making it I shall add no more but set down in few words the Tenor and Force of the Act of Navigation and leave every man to his own Judgment of it The Act in the Preamble tells us the necessity for Increase of our Ships and Seamen That for Encouragement to so good a Work that after a time limited no Foreign-built Ship or men shall Import any Commodities but of the Product of their own Country The Consequence of which is That no other Nation should have the benefit of Carriage to us but each Country their own and if they could not do it so Cheap as we then our Ships would have the Carriage and not Foreigners by which our Ships and Seamen would be Increased The other part of the Act is for encouraging our Fishing and that is by placing double Allience-duty upon all Fish Oyl c. Caught and Imported by Foreigners This sure cannot be a fault to give our own Men encouragement above Strangers since the Navigation and Trade of the Kingdom gives them better Livelihood than the Fishing would if Foreigners who live hardly might import Fish as free from Duty as they the consequence of which would be that we should lose the Fishing as we have some other Employments of our Seamen Of Banks and Lumbers PResuming the usefulness of Banks in England is not now controverted I submit to better Judgments how Banks and Lumbers may be set up in all Parts of this Kingdom for the Encouragement of the Manufactories and Navigation thereof I conceive there is nothing so destructive to the Trade and Employments of the Nation as engrossing the Money and Business of the Kingdom in great and few hands that would bring the Kingdom into the Rickets draw all the Nourishment to the Head London would swell beyond its natural growth and the other parts of the Kingdom waste and dwindle to nothing The Banks then that I should humbly Propose may be thus established 1. That in every Shire there be a Bank erected by Act of Parliament 2. That the Fund for these Banks be Land and Money And because there may be no difficulty in point of Title of such Lands as shall be put in Bank that a Law may pass in Parliament That whoever is in quiet Possession of an Estate and shall place it in the Bank as part of the Original Fund that Land shall be perpetually in the Bank whatever Title may afterwards appear and shall only be transferr'd to him that shall recover the same For it is to be understood that whoever puts Land in Bank is never to receive more out than his proportionable part of the Gain arising from the General Stock So that Land remains the same whoever makes a Title to it But for the better Credit of Land in the Bank a Proviso may be in the Act That no Title of Land put into the Bank shall be question'd after years This will give a Reputation to any particular person's Title of Lands in the Bank if he should have occasion to sell his Interest which otherwise will not be of equal Value with those that put their Original Fund into the Bank in Money The Fund of Banks being thus established by Land and Money in each County the next thing will be to appoint the Quantum and who shall come in for it is not to be doubted but there will be more than enough and every Shire will strive to bring in as much as they will be permitted For the General Fund of the whole Kingdom I suppose Four Millions may be sufficient to begin with half Land and half Money and for the particular Proportions of each Shire their Proportion in the Land-Tax may be a good Rule The Manage of these Banks in each Shire may be by men chosen among themselves That twice a year a General Meeting may be in London two being sent out of every Shire there to settle Accounts and make Dividends of the Profit which would be great satisfaction to all persons concerned and would quicken the Trade and Business of the Nation For the dispose putting out and receiving Money in Bank there can be no set Rules and therefore will depend upon the Accidents of War and Trade but some standing Rules may be thought on for the Rates of Exchange through the Kingdom upon which there will arise great part of the Gain and will be considerable in the Advantage and Ease of the Nation in quick circulating of the Money and the most effectual way for suppressing Highway-men for that no man need travel with more than Pocket-Money for his Expence when he may have Bank-Tickets to any part of the Kingdom where he goes There seems a difficulty Whether these Banks should pay any Interest-Money having so great a Fund with which and their Credit they may supply all the Wants and Employments of the Nation for that it will be impossible to hinder these Banks from having an Unlimited Credit so that perchance Two Millions of Ready Money
be so much Industry Having past the Throne and such as attend it among which I account Gentlemen of Real Estates I come to those which I think Sumptuary Laws should reach and they are Merchants Artizans and Countrey-Men I leave out Divines and Lawyers the first lye under no Temptation the latter I hope they will pardon me if I say it is the best return they could make to disperse their great Gains among the Poor But to return to those I think properly under Sumptuary Laws Merchants Tradesmen c. And for them there seems a double reason one because they know how to Imploy their Money in Trade and Manufactoryes and therefore should as much as is practicable be kept from wasting their Stock on unnecessary Expences for that their Stock is the Seed Corn of Trade and all Men are careful that they want not Seed for their Ground because it is common therefore not regarded but it is certainly true that the endless Expence of our Artizans and Poor is the Greatest Cause of the Decay of our Manufactoryes There is a Train of Mischiefs that attend one another in the Excess of People that depend on Labour Twenty Shillings may find Materials to keep a Family a Moneth at Work and the want of it not only hinders them but puts them upon farther Expence and perhaps Gaming or Debauchery Shop-keepers arrive to a higher Excess before it Effects them but yet they are often dip'd before they see their Danger and so it is with Merchants that are a Degree above them usually so in every respect by means of their Education and Converse yet these Men are oftner undone by an Insensible way of Expence than by Losses at Sea no Men know how to live better than they I mean that we call fine Eating and good Equipage and there are those among our Merchants can afford it but then it is such as are come into Estates that were not got by Men that understood fine Living I have often reflected on the Gain of Countrey-Farmers that may have a Free-hold of Forty or Fifty Pounds per Annum These Men we see out of their small Income with their Industry in Rural Matters shall be able to give good Portions to their Children have Money alwayes at Command when a Merchant of Ten times his Fund and Appearance of Gain shall hardly be able to keep afloat and for this I can assign no Cause but the difference in Expence and yet the Merchant not accounted Extravagant but the difference lyes in this The Custom of the Countrey where the Countrey-Man lives is to wear plain warm Cloaths his Wife perhaps with good Searge himself with Kersey Twice or Thrice a Weak the Pot boyls and the Spit us'd on Sundays The Merchant he lives in a City where Rich Cloaths Lace c. is Common Wear and a Sett Table every day and to be but in the common Road with his Neighbours he spends Five times as much as the Countrey-man this at a moderate Computation amounts to a great Sum in Twenty or Thirty Years I might Inlarge on this Subject but I submit to better Understandings what I have said and my Opinion that Sumptuary Laws duely Executed would Inrich and Strengthen these Kingdoms We see it doth so among our Neighbours the Dutch and Hamburgers where you seldom hear of a middle sort of Dealer and perhaps never of a Handioraft Man to fail It is certain they sell for less Profit than we do that they loose more in proportion at Sea than we do occasioned by the under-Manning their Ships Yet notwithstanding these disadvantages their Merchants and all sorts of Tradesmen are much Richer than ours for which no reason can be given but their Frugal Living which to me is an undeniable Confutation of the Opinion that the larger our Expence in Cloaths and Food is the better our Artizans and Poor are maintained The true way for Increasing the Riches of the Nation in General and the Artizan in Particular is to Imploy them in Commodities Exported not consumed in the Kingdom If what I have said gain any Acceptation the Modus for putting something in Practice like Sumptuary-Laws may be admitted and it shall be in few words First Negatively I do not think making Laws to Prohibit or Limit any sort of People in their Diet or Apparel practicable it would set the Nation in a Ferment and Heralds must become Judges of others Food and Rayment as Lawyers are of their Freeholds and Properties Those were happy times when pulling off a Shoe was a good Conveyance and a Prince was his own Caterour His Lady the Cook We have an Infallible Authour for it But to return the Method for bringing what hath been discours'd on this Head into Practice I conceive may be to lay a Mulct by the Quarter on all Persons that are Artizans Handicrafts-Men Farmers Victuallers Inn Keepers that shall wear any Silk Gold or Silver This would restrain the Extravagancy of such as Expence doth most hurt unto and be a means to Enable them to Enlarge their Trades and Manufactoryes As I have said before their Money is the Seed of Trade and if we suppose there may be but Five Hundred Thousand such Families in the Kingdom and that by Frugal Living they may lay up but Forty Shillings a Year of their needless Expence in Cloaths it would put a Million a Year more in the Trade and Manufactory of the Nation which besides other Advantages in Humane Probability might save Parishes from the Charge of many Poor But of that the next Chapter will Treat Of Working-Schools and Hospitals THere seems nothing that would be a more Universal Good than a Provision for the Infant Poor of the Nation whose Misfortunes seems not greater in their Being than in the Provision that is made for them by the Parishes where they were born The common Practice in the dispose of them is to pay a Poor Woman by the Year for keeping a Child and as soon or before they are capable of the meanest Service they are turn'd off and seldom put to a Trade by which means as their Entrance into the World is a Charge to the Parish so is their going out in Old Age if they come not to a worse end it being observed that most of the Pilfering and Vagrant People that fill the Streets are such that are not bred to Trades in their Youth This Evil like Original Sin comes into the World with these Miserable People I mean when they are sent out of the Parish without Education in a habit of Idleness which produceth every day worse Conversation and less Shame And if from these Slips comes the greatest part of the most Unfortunate Poor such I mean as come to untimely ends may not this then deserve the Consideration of the most Pious and Politique Heads in the Nation It is strange to see how provident we are to keep off little troubles when they are near and how careless we are of