54 Benjamin Franklin (1760
cannot in the twenty-eight years have increased in a
greater proportion than as four to one. The additional
 demand, then, and consumption of goods from
England, of thirteen parts in seventeen, more than
the additional number would require, must be owing
 to this: that the people, having by their industry
 mended their circumstances, are enabled to
indulge themselves in finer clothes, better furniture,
and a more general use of all our manufactures than
heretofore.
In fact, the occasion for English goods in North
America, and the inclination to have and use them,
is, and must be for ages to come, much greater than
the ability of the people to pay for them; they must
therefore, as they now do, deny themselves many
things they would otherwise choose to have, or increase
 their industry to obtain them. And thus, if
they should at any time manufacture some coarse
article, which, on account of its bulk or some other
circumstance, cannot so well be brought to them
from Britain, it only enables them the better to pay
for finer goods, that otherwise they could not indulge
 themselves in; so that the exports thither are
not diminished by such manufacture, but rather
increased. The single article of manufacture in these
colonies, mentioned by the Remarker, is hats made
in New England. It is true, there have been, ever
since the first settlement of that country, a few hatters
 there, drawn thither probably at first by the
facility of getting beaver, while the woods were but
little cleared, and there was plenty of those animals.
The case is greatly altered now. The beaver skins

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