42 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE 
a great number of poor, and to increase our decaying 
trade.” 1 
‘ England’s Treasure by Foreign Trade *> was by no 
means taken up only with the Dutch challenge to 
English trade. It was an able exposition of the 
importance of foreign trade and of what Mun con- 
ceived to be the true principles on which that trade 
should be conducted. There was good common sense 
in what he wrote. ‘The ordinary means therefore 
to increase our wealth and treasure is by Foreign 
Trade, wherein we must ever observe this rule, to sell 
more to strangers yearly than we consume of theirs in 
value ” 2; and, while he held that the English ought to 
supply their own hemp, flax, cordage and tobacco, and 
that there was advantage in exporting their products in 
theit own ships, he was free-trader enough to write 
‘ that the commetce ought to be free to strangers to 
bring in and catty out at their pleasure,’ ® and also to 
suggest that, in order to give employment to the poor, 
manufactures made of foreign materials in England 
should be exported customs free. The East India 
Company, with which he was connected, stood in 
1630 for trade only, as Sit Thomas Roe had advised. 
‘ Let this be received as a tule,” he wrote home to the 
Company in 1616, ‘ that, if you will profit, seek it at 
sea, and in quiet trade ; for without controversy it is 
an error to affect garrisons and land wars in India.’ 4 
In this matter the Dutch were held up by Roe in the 
same passage for a warning, not for an example. It 
hath been also the error of the Dutch, who seek planta- 
LP, 23. 2 Pp, 11. 3 Pp. 21. 
\ The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe, ut sup., vol. ii, p. 344.