A.D. 1689 
~1776. 
The Whigs. 
hy organ- 
ising the 
Bank of 
England 
24rcum- 
scribed the 
power of 
the Crown 
110 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
she herring trade’. Protection in any form is apt to entail 
some unsatisfactory results in society, and the increase of 
smuggling was an evil which sprang directly out of attempts 
at the national encouragement of industry. It is impossible 
to estimate the pecuniary loss which occurred?, and the 
demoralisation, which was due to these premiums on evading 
the law and on dishonesty, brought about a serious lowering 
of the ordinary respect for the law. 
211. The establishment of the Bank of England was 
another economic change which diminished the importance 
of the monarchy in the realm. It has been commonly 
remarked that, by linking the interests of the moneyed 
men to the revolutionary settlement, it played a great part 
in extinguishing the chances of a Jacobite restoration ; but 
its constitutional importance lay far deeper than this. The 
organisation of this institution brought the power of the 
Crown to borrow still more completely under parliamentary 
control. When the taxes were assigned®, and the Crown 
lands* administered by Parliament, there was little security 
that the monarch was free to offer to moneyed men, if he 
wished to borrow. At the Revolution, the House of Commons 
obtained a practical control, not only over the taxation levied 
from the landed men, but also over the advances made by 
the moneyed classes’. The crisis, when Charles I. had been 
npon linens, made in that part of Great Britain called Scotland, and in Ireland, 
which may have been put on foreign linens, in order to vend them as linens of the 
manufacture of that part of Great Britain called Scotland, or of Ireland.” 
[8 G. II. c. 24. 
1 5and 6 W.and M.c. 7, § 10. 
3 The smuggling of wool to the Continent during the period when the export 
was absolutely prohibited attained enormous proportions; it was estimated in 
1788 at 11,000 packs annually (Bischoff, 4 Comprehensive History of the Woollen 
and Worsted Manufactures, 1. 241). Profitable illicit trade was carried on in 
many articles of import. Sir Matthew Decker (Serious Considerations, p. 6) 
alleges the case of one man in Zeeland who exported to England half-a-million 
pounds of tea. He had started life as a common sailor, but prospered so that he 
bad come to own four sloops which he employed in running tea. 
8 The assignment of taxes and separate keeping of accounts lasted till Pitt's 
time, see Chisholm, Notes on the Heads of Public Income and Expenditure, in 
Reports, 1868-9, xxxv. Ap. 18, p. 811, printed pag. 327. 
4 The Crown lands were almost valueless at the Revolution, Parl. Hist. 
v. 552. Bee also Chisholm, Reports, 1868-9, xxxv. Ap. 13, on Crown Lands, 
p. 915, printed pag. 431. Commons Journals, xLvit. 836, Report of the Board 
of Land Revenue. 
3 (amnare the Resolutions passed in 1681 on this topic. Parl. Hist. 1v, 1294.