It deserves some notice, that just at, or soon after writing these sheets,we have an old dispute warmly revived among us, upon the question of ourtrade being declined, or not declined. I have nothing to do with theparties, nor with the reason of their strife upon that subject; I thinkthey are wrong on both sides, and yet it is hardly worth while to set themto rights, their quarrel being quite of another nature, and the good ofour trade little or nothing concerned in it.
Nor do they seem to desire to be set right, but rather to want an occasionto keep up a strife which perhaps serves some other of their wickedpurposes,[Pg vi] better than peace would do; and indeed, those who seek toquarrel, who can reconcile?
I meddle not with the question, I say, whether trade be declined or not;but I may easily show the people of England, that if they please toconcern themselves a little for its prosperity, it will prosper; and onthe contrary, if they will sink it and discourage it, it is evidently intheir power, and it will sink and decline accordingly.
You have here some popular mistakes with respect to our woollenmanufacture fairly stated, our national indolence in that very particularreproved, and the consequence laid before you; if you will not make use ofthe hints here given, the fault is nobody’s but your own.
Never had any nation the power of improving their trade, and of advancingtheir own manufactures, so entirely in their own hands as we have at thistime, and have had for many years past, without troubling the legislatureabout it at all: and though it is of the last importance to the wholenation, and, I may say, to almost every individual in it; nay, and that itis evident you all know it to be so; yet how next to impossible is it topersuade any one person to set a foot forward towards so[Pg vii] great and sogood a work; and how much labour has been spent in vain to rouse us up toit?
The following sheets are as one alarm more given to the lethargic age, ifpossible, to open their eyes to their own prosperity; the author sums uphis introduction to it in this short positive assertion, which he is readyto make good, viz., That if the trade of England is not in a flourishingand thriving condition, the fault and only occasion of it is all our own,and is wholly in our own power to mend, whenever we please.
As by my title I profess to be addressing myself to Englishmen, I think Ineed not tell them that they live by trade; that their commerce has raisedthem from what they were to what they are, and may, if cultivated andimproved, raise them yet further to what they never were; and this in fewwords is an index of my present work.
It is worth an Englishman’s remark, that we were esteemed as a growingthriving nation in trade