Our cloathiers combine
against the wooll-masters, and keep their spinners but just alive:
they steale hedges, spoile coppices, and are trained up as nurseries
of sedition and rebellion.
[For a long series of years the clothiers, or manufacturers, and the
wool-growers, or landowners, entertained opposite opinions respecting
the propriety of exporting wool; and numerous acts of parliament
were passed at different times encouraging or restricting its
exportation, as either of these conflicting interests happened to
prevail for the time with the legislature. The landowners were
generally desirous to export their produce, without restriction, to
foreign markets, and to limit the importation of competing wool from
abroad. The manufacturers, on the contrary, wished for the free
importation of those foreign wools, without an admixture of which
the native produce cannot be successfully manufactured; whilst they
were anxious to restrain the exportation of British wool, from an
absurd fear of injury to their own trade. Some curious particulars of
the contest between these parties, and of the history of legislation
on the subject, will be found in Porter's Progress of the Nation and
McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary and Statistical Account of the
British Empire; and more particularly in Bischoff's History of Wool
(1842). The wool trade is now free from either import or export duties.
- J. B.]
PART II. - CHAPTER X.
FALLING OF RENTS.
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