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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A32827	A discourse about trade wherein the reduction of interest in money to 4 l. per centum, is recommended : methods for the employment and maintenance of the poor are proposed : several weighty points relating to companies of merchants, the act of navigation, naturalization of strangers, our woollen manufactures, the ballance of trade, and the nature of plantations, and their consequences in relation to the kingdom are seriously discussed : and some arguments for erecting a court of merchants for determining controversies, relating to maritime affairs, and for a law for transferrance of bills of debts, are humbly offered.	Child, Josiah, Sir, 1630-1699.; Culpeper, Thomas, Sir, 1578-1662. Small treatise against usury.	1690 (1690)	Wing C3853; ESTC R8738	119,342	350

LICENSED November the 18th 1689. And Entered according to Order A DISCOURSE ABOUT TRADE Wherein the Reduction of Interest of Money to 4 l. per Centum is Recommended Methods for the Employment and Maintenance of the Poor are proposed Several weighty Points relating to Companies of MERCHANTS The Act of NAVIGATION NATURALIZATION of Strangers Our WOOLLEN MANUFACTURES The BALLANCE of TRADE And the Nature of Plantations and their Consequences in relation to the Kingdom are seriously Discussed And some Arguments for erecting a Court of Merchants for determining Controversies relating to Maritime Affairs and for a Law for Transferrance of Bills of Debts are humbly Offered Never before Printed Printed by A Sowle at the Crooked-Billet in Holloway-Lane And Sold at the Three Keys in Nags-head-Court Grace-Church-Street 1690. THE PUBLISHER TO THE READER THE following Sheets were wrote as the Reader will observe by the Contents soon after the dreadful Fire which happened in London in the Year 1666. they fell very accidentally into my Hands in Manuscript as they had ever since continued this last Summer and having in my Conversation in the world heard several of the Propositions therein discussed frequently contrasted I did set my self with some Curiosity to run them over and in doing it discerned as I thought much experimental Truth and Reason and a more then ordinary Life and Spirit for the Publick good in the whole Work I therefore made suite to the Judicious Worthy Author to permit me to the same end for which it appears to have been at the first wrote to hand it over to some of our best Patriots to which he being pleased to concede I began to transcribe it but finding that that would prove a tedious task and that that way would confine this excellent Treatise to too narrow bounds I have presumed thus to emit it to the World I may not divulge the Author's Name but this I may truely say He is no Trader neither pays any Use for Money but receives a great deal yearly and hath to my knowledge a considerable Estate in Lands and therefore the most invidious cannot conceive he had any private or selfish end in the following Discourses I have in my time been privy to and frequently concerned in the buying and selling of much Land and I find every thing he said at that time so true of the then low Rates of Land as was his Prediction of its rising in Purchase so soon as that lazy way of Usury by Bankeering should be broke that I am morally confident if the Parliament should be pleased to abate the Interest of Mony by a Law to 4 l. per Cent. We shall as certainly see Lands in England as generally sell at twenty five years Purchase within five years after such a Law as We did see them about the time the following Discourse was Wrote sell at seventeen years Purchase and as We do now see Lands currently sell at twenty years Purchase and upwards I took occasion in my discourse with the Author to observe to him that though Lands in general were risen in sale as he fore-saw to twenty years purchase or more that yet Marsh and Feeding Grounds were abated in Rent to the Tenants at least 20 or 30 l. per Cent. He granted me to be in the right herein and imputed the cause thereof partly to the Prohibition of Irish Cattle and partly to the late general practice of sowing Clover Saint-foyne Rye-Grass and other Grass-Seeds upon which I ask'd him Whether he thought it would not tend to the publick Good to prohibit by a Law the sowing of those Seeds He said by no means Honest Industry and Invention is never to be obstructed by Laws I queried then why Usury should be checkt by a Law He replyed that in the Trade of Vsury there was neither Industry not Invention but Idleness and Oppression and that all Christian Churches as well as most particular eminent Divines ever since our Saviour Christ's time had condemned Vsury as sinful The fore-going Discourse leads to another great Question Whether Foreign Commodities such as tend to nourish Vice and Luxury ought not for the publick Good to be prohibited by a Law or by loading them with a deep Custom such as VVines Brandy Sugar Tobacco c. And I am humbly of opinion with the most profound submission to all my Superiours whose proper Business it is to agree and constitute Laws that it is not for the publick Good to load even such Commodities with so great a Duty as doth or may ruin our Plantations or totally prevent the English from a possibility of supplying the Eastern and other parts of the World with these Commodities because by so doing We give away the most precious of all our Trades a great part of our Navigation to our wiser Neighbours the Dutch who had rather pay their Twentieth Penny twice a year than loose their Trade to the Baltick with Salt Wine Brandy Tobacco c. I might say too with Chesnuts and VValnuts as inconsiderable as their value is Every thing being to be prized above Gold that encreaseth the Navigation of any Country especially that of this Island of England I have been always an Advocate for Liberty and an Enemy to Persecution for matters of Religion and so I am confident was the Gentleman our worthy Author as the following Tract clearly evinces and by so doing gives the Reason why this admirable Work hath till now lain in obscurity the Policy and Councils of the late Reigns constantly discountenancing that excellent Principle And because Liberty of Conscience is frequently touch'd in this ensuing Discourse and declared to be a principal means to advance the publick Good of this Kingdom viz. Trade Which 't is evident is the real and only design of this Treatise I shall take the freedom to tell my thoughts very plainly in relation to it I remember that greatest Master of Historians Cornelius Tacitus says of the incomparable Roman Emperour Nerva that he did Reconcile Res olim insociabiles things never before adjusted the freedom of all Men with the sole Command of one Such a Prince I hope and verily believe God Almighty in abundant Mercy to this poor Nation hath sent us in his present Majesty our truly good and gracious Soveraign King William the Favourite of Heaven and Delight of Men under whom We may most undoubtedly be the Happiest People upon the Face of the whole Earth if We will but We shall never attain that Happiness and hand it over to Posterity except We all as well Dissenters as Church of England Men do sincerely and cordially endeavour to imitate the Wisdom and Goodness of that Memorable Prince Nerva to reconcile things formerly unsociable viz. Liberty of Conscience to all with the preservation of one entire Vniform National Church in the enjoyment of all the publick Revenues thereof these two things in my most unbiass'd retired thoughts are so far from contradictions that as our People in England are

measure abated by reason of our foreign Plantations but propose to prove the contrary This I know is a controverted Point do believe that where there is one man of my mind there may be a thousand of the contrary but I hope when the following Grounds of my Opinion have been throughly examined there will not be so many Dissenters That very many People now go and have gone from this Kingdom almost every Year for these sixty Years past and have and do settle in our foreign Plantations is most certain But the first Question will be Whether if England had no foreign Plantations for those People to be transported unto they could or would have stayed and lived at home with us I am of Opinion they neither would nor could To resolve this Question we must consider what kind of People they were and are that have and do transport themselves to our foreign Plantations New-England as every one knows was originally inhabitated and hath since successively been replenisht by a sort of People called Puritans which could not conform to the Ecclesiastical Laws of England but being wearied with Church Censures and Persecutions were forced to quit their Fathers Land to find out new Habitations as many of them did in Germany and Holland as well as at New-England and had there not been a New-England found for some of them Germany and Holland probably had received the rest But Old England to be sure had lost them all Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled by a sort of loose vagrant People vicious and destitute of means to live at home being either unfit for labour or such as could find none to employ themselves about or had so mis-behaved themselves by Whoreing Thieving or other Debauchery that none would set them on work which Merchants and Masters of Ships by their Agents or Spirits as they were called gathered up about the Streets of London and other places cloathed and transported to be employed upon Plantations and these I say were such as had there been no English foreign Plantation in the World could probably never have lived at home to do Service for their Country but must have come to be hanged or starved or dyed untimely of some of those miserable Diseases that proceed from want and Vice or else have sold themselves for Soldiers to be knockt on the Head or starved in the Quarrels of our Neighbours as many thousands of brave English men were in the low Countries as also in the Wars of Germany France and Sweeden c. or else if they could by begging or otherwise arrive to the Stock of 2 s. 6 d. to waft them over to Holland become Servants to the Dutch who refuse none But the principal growth and encrease of the afore-said Plantations of Virginia and Barbadoes happened in or immediately after our late Civil Wars when the worsted party by the fate of War being deprived of their Estates and having some of them never been bred to labour and other made unfit for it by the lazy habit of a Soldiers life there wanting Means to maintain them all abroad with his Majesty many of them betook themselves to the afore-said Plantations and great numbers of Scotch Soldiers of his Majesty's Army after Worcester Fight were by the then prevailing Powers voluntarily sent in thither Another great swarm or accession of new Inhabit●nts to the afore-said Plantations as also to New-England Iamaica and all other his Majesties Plantations in the West-Indies ensued upon his Majesties Restauration when the former prevailing party being by a divine Hand of Providence brought under the Army disbanded many Officers dis-placed and all the new purcharsers of publick Titles dispossest of their pretended Lands Estates c. many became impoverished d●stitute of employment and therefore such as could find no way of living at home and some which feared the re-establishment of the Ecclesiastical Laws under which they could not live were forced to transport themselves or sell themselves for a few Years to be transported by others to the foreign English Plantations The constant supply that the said Plantations have since had hath by such vagrant loose People as I before-mentioned picked up especially about the Streets and Suburbs of London and Westminster and by Malefactors condemned for Crimes for which by the Law they deserved to dye and some of those People called Quakers banished for Meeting on pretence of Religious Worship Now if from the Premises it be duly considered what kind of Persons those have been by which our Plantations have at all times been replenished I suppose it will appear that such they have been and under such Circumstances that if his Majesty had had no foreign Plantations to which they might have resorted England however must have lost them To illustrate the truth whereof a little further let us consider what Captain Graunt the ingenious Author of the Observations upon the Bills of Mortality saith pag. 76. and in other places of his Book concerning the City of London and it is not only said but undeniably proved viz. That the City of London let the Mortality be what it will by Plague or otherwise repairs its Inhabitants once in two Years And pag. 101. again If there be encouragement for a hundred Persons in London that is a way how a hundred may live better then in the Country the evacuating of a fourth or third part of that number must soon be supplied out of the Country who in a short time remove themselves from thence hither so long until the City for want of receipt and encouragement regurgitates and sends them back 1. What he hath proved concerning London I say of England in general and the same may be said of any Kingdom or Country in the World Such as our employment is for People so many will our People be and if we should imagin we have in England employment but for one hundred People and we have born and bred amongst us one hundred and fifty People I say the fifty must away from us or starve or be hanged to prevent it whether we had any foreign Plantations or not 2. If by reason of the accommodation of living in our foreign Plantations we have evacuated more of our People then we should have done if we had no such Plantations I say with the aforesaid Author in the case of London and if that Evacuation be grown to an excess which I believe it never did barely on the account of the Plantations that decrease would procure its own Remedy for much want of People would procure greater Wages and greater Wages if our Laws gave encouragement would procure us a supply of People without the charge of breeding them as the Dutch are and always have been supplied in their greatest Extremities Object But it may be said Is not the Facility of being transported into the Plantations together with the enticing Methods customarily used to perswade People to go thither and the encouragement of living there