And our woollen goods being two-thirds of our
foreign exports, it ought to be the chief object of the public care,
if we expect to be gainers in the balance of trade, which is what we
hunt after in these inquiries.
Thirdly, as to the lower rank of all, which we compute at 2,825,000
heads, a majority of the whole people, their principal subsistence
is upon the degrees above them, and if those are rendered uneasy
these must share in the calamity, but even of this inferior sort no
small proportion contribute largely to excises, as labourers and
out-servants, which likewise affect the common seamen, who must
thereupon raise their wages or they will not have wherewithal to
keep their families left at home, and the high wages of seamen is
another burden upon our foreign traffic. As to the cottagers, who
are about a fifth part of the whole people, some duties reach even
them, as those upon malt, leather, and salt, but not much because of
their slender consumption, but if the gentry, upon whose woods and
gleanings they live, and who employ them in day labour, and if the
manufacturers, for whom they card and spin, are overburdened with
duties, they cannot afford to give them so much for their labour and
handiwork, nor to yield them those other reliefs which are their
principal subsistence, for want of which these miserable wretches
must perish with cold and hunger.
Thus we see excises either directly or indirectly fall upon the
whole body of the people, but we do not take notice of these matters
as receding from our former opinion.
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