The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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COMMERCIAL RELATIONS WITH FRANCE AND PORTUGAL 461 bullion which was annually imported from Portugal. This ADs was estimated at £50,000 per week; and though Adam Smith shows good reason for regarding this as an exaggera- tion?, there can be no doubt that the amount of bullion which flowed into England through this trade was very large. We cannot wonder that, according to the ideas of the time, Methuen’s achievement was rated very highly?: This he had opened up a large foreign demand for our goods, and ae » had thus stimulated the employment of labour at home; while much of the returns from Portugal came to us in the form which was most necessary for restoring the currency, and most convenient for carrying on the great European War. A still more interesting illustration of the eagerness of the English public to form such foreign relationships as might conduce to the prosperity of our manufactures, is furnished by the failure of the Tory Government to carry presented out their schemes of trade policy, when they were nego- Sbstiasls tiating the Treaty of Utrecht in 1718. The treaty proposed bo open trade, on the basis of the arrangements which had existed in 1664, before the war of tariffs and occasional pro- hibitions?, which had lasted for nearly half a century, had begun to rage. Bolingbroke endeavoured, without success, to revert to the traditional policy of the Court party in regard to intercourse with France; by the. eighth and ninth i clauses of the commercial treaty, which accompanied the of 1713, Treaty of Peace, it was agreed that French goods should be imported subject to the duties exacted in 1664 and on the same terms* as the most favoured nation®. A bill was Wealth of Nations, Iv. 6, p. 223. Compare Smith's Memoirs of Wool; 11. 51 note. 3 The prohibition of French wine was removed in 1710 by 9 Anne, c. 8. % The existing impost was much more onerous (4 and 5 W. and M. c. 5). This proposal seemed to endanger the Methuen Treaty, as England had promised to show more favour to the wines of Portugal than to those of any other country. If we admitted French wines on as favourable terms as Portuguese, we should infringe the Methuen Treaty, and the Portuguese would then be at liberty to retaliate by prohibiting our woollen goods. The loss of this market would affect the manufacturers, who were engaged in producing cloth, and the landlords, whose rents improved when the price of wool kept up and pasture farming was profitable. The authors of the British Merchant were anxious to convince our legislators “that the preserving our looms and the Rents of Great Britain was of greater Consequence to the Nation than gratifying our Palates with French Wine.” British Merchant. 1. D. ix. 5 Koch and Schoell. 1. 214.

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