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.
