CAPITAL AND THE PLANTING OF NEW INDUSTRIES 521 
of Trustees for Manufactures invited Nicholas D’Assaville A-D. 1659 
along with experienced weavers of cambric and their families ’ 
to come and settle. They established themselves in a suburb 
of Edinburgh, on the road to Leith, and the site of the little 
colony is commemorated by the mame Picardy Place. In putlle 
1758, Parliament voted £3,000 a year for nine years to ! 
propagate this trade in the Highlands; and such success 
attended these efforts that, in 1800, the Board thought it 
unnecessary to open a spinning school in Caithness, as the 
art was generally understood and there were so many 
opportunities for learning it? In 1746 an Edinburgh gas 
Company had been chartered under the name of the British ment of 
Linen Company. The Company's principal mode of operation credit. 
was by advancing ready money to the manufacturers, and 
they thus came to devote themselves to ordinary banking 
business, outside the limits of the special trade they had 
intended to subserve at first. The development of the credit 
system in Scotland and the growth of the linen industry 
went on hand in hand. Under these various encourage- 
ments the Scotch linen trade increased rapidly; and, 
whereas the average annual production from 1728 to 1732 
was only three and a half millions of yards, it had reached 
just double the amount in 1750% It must be remembered 
that, in this matter, Scotland was at a very great advantage 
as compared with Ireland, as from 1707 onwards the Northern 
Kingdom shared in all the advantages of English commerce? 
and the Glasgow merchants were anxious that no step should 
be taken which would have curtailed their privileges. Under 
Scottish 
‘inen had 
better 
recess to 
foreign 
markets 
whan risk. 
1 See above, p. 330 n. 5. 2 Bremner, 219. 8 Macpherson, mx. 289. 
¢ Ireland was only permitted to export her linen direct to the American 
Plantations. 8 and 4 Anne, c. 8. 
5 Compare the debate in 1778. Parl. Hist. xx. 1117. Also Burke's letters to 
Bristol Merchants, ¢b. 1100. “Trade is not a limited thing; as if the objects 
of mutual demand and consumption could not stretch beyond the bounds of our 
jealousies. God hes given the earth to the children of men, and he has un- 
doubtedly, in giving it to them, given them what is abundantly sufficient for all 
their exigencies; not a scanty, but a most liberal provision for them all. The 
author of our nature has written it strongly in that nature, and has promulgated 
the same law in his written word, that man shall eat his bread by his labour; and 
I am persuaded, that no man, and no combination of men, for their own ideas of 
their particular profit, can, without great impiety, undertake to say, that he shall 
aot do so: that they have mo sort of right, either to prevent the labour, or to