New Projections are every day set on Foot to render the making our Woollen Manufactures easy, which should be render’d cheaper by the Contrivance of the Manufacturers, not by falling the Price of Labour; Cheapness creates Expence, and Expence gives fresh Employments, whereby the Poor will be still kept at Work.
The same for our Product; Mines and Pitts are drained by Engines and Aquæducts instead of Hands; the Husband-Man turns up the Ground with his Sullow, not Diggs it with his Spade; covers his Grain with the Harrow, not with the Rake; brings home his Harvest with Carts, not on Mens Backs; and many other easy Methods are used, both for Improving of Land, and raising its Product, which lessen the number of Labourers, and make room for better Wages to be given those that are Imployed.
Nor am I of their Opinion, who think the running down the Price of our Growth and Product, that so they may buy Provisions cheap, an Advantage to the Inland Trade of this Kingdom, but of the contrary.
To understand this rightly, let us begin with the Shop-keeper, or Buyer and Seller, who is the Wheel whereon the Inland Trade turns, as he buys of the Importer and Manufacturer, and sells again to the Country; suppose this Man spends Two Hundred Pounds _per_ Annum in all things necessary for himself and Family, as Provisions, Cloaths, House-Rent, and other Expences, the Question will be, what part of this is laid out in Flesh, Corn, Butter, Cheese, &c. barely considered according to their first Cost in the Market? I presume Fifty or Sixty Pounds _per_ Annum to be the most, whereon the Advance to him will not be so much by keeping up our Product to a good Rate, as the Profits which will consequently arise in his Trade will amount unto; For by this means the Farmer will be enabled to give a better Rent to his Landlord, who may then keep a more Plentiful Table, spend more Wine, Fruit, Sugars, Spices, and other things wherewith he is furnished from the City, suit himself and his Family oftner, and carry on a greater Splendour in every thing; the Farmer according to his condition may do the same, and give higher Wages to the Labourers imployed in Husbandry, who may then live better, and buy new Cloaths oftner, instead of patching up old ones; by this means the Manufacturers will be encouraged to give a better Price for Wooll and Labour, when they shall find a Vent as fast as they can make; and a Flux of Wealth causing a Variety of Fashions, will add Wings to their Inventions, when they shall see their Manufactures advanced in their Values by the Buyer’s Fancy; This likewise will encourage the Merchants to encrease their Exports, when they shall find a quick Vent for their Imports; By which regular Circulation, Payments will be short, and all will grow rich; But when Trade deadens in the Fountain, when the Gentlemen and the Farmers are kept low, every one in his order feels it, It being most certain, and grounded on the Observation of all Men who have lookt into it, That in those Countrys where Provisions are Cheap, the People are generally Poor, both proceeding from the want of Trade; so that he who will give a right Judgment in this Matter, must not consider things only as they offer themselves at the first Sight, but as they will be in their Consequences.