Malmulls with fine flowers wrought into white, the flowers to be about 3 or 4 inches asunder clean and neatly made 21 yds. long and ell wide Striped Malmuls, fine Doreas (from Santaporee) 4 Silk and cotton elasetics 12 Shellack the best & finest Cassimbozer (Small miscellaneous items follow.) (II) MADRAS. List of Goods to be provided at the Coast, sent Dec. 12, 1683. First jrny. Saderuncheras Colloway Poos Goacon Chazollar Dungarees Cotton Rumalls Sailcloth, if good Cumums Pegu Sticklack Salpecados III. SURAT List of Goods to be provided at Surat, Augus APPENDIX B. THE AUTHORSHIP OF THE Considerations upon East India Trade THE tradition (reported by McCulloch) that Henry Martyn was the author of this tract is supported by various evidences. Perhaps the most important of them is that in one of the copies preserved in the Goldsmiths' Library, we find the words "by Henry Martyn, Esq.," which, according to Prof. Foxwell, is in apparently contemporary handwriting."* And all that we know of Martyn does not militate against this conclusion. Henry Martyn, according to various authorities,† was the eldest son of Edward Martyn, of Upham in Wiltshire, and was the elder brother of Edward Martyn (Junior), Professor of Rhetoric as Gresham College from 1696 to 1720. Henry was educated at Eton, and perhaps Cambridge, and was called to the Bar. He was reputed to be an able lawyer as well as a talented writer, but owing to his failing health he seldom practised at the Bar. He wrote some good papers for the Spectatort about 1711-12, and its editor, Sir Richard Steele, esteemed his articles so much that he placed him at the head of his list of contributors, which included such names as Alexander Pope. Steele even declared that Martyn's name can hardly be mentioned in a list wherein he would not deserve the precedence."§ Later he seems to have been one of the principal writers of the British Merchant, the Whig Journal that opposed the French trade negotiations of the Tory Ministry in 1712. When the Whigs came to power in 1715, his services were rewarded with the office of the Inspector-General of Exports and Imports. However, his literary successes and official preferments did not help his purse very much. When he died at Blackheath in 1721, he left vast debts, which were later paid off by his only son Bendal (Fellow of King's College, Cambridge) with the fortune left him by an aunt. || At the outset the question arises how the author of such an avowed Free Trade tract as The Considerations could later become * In a private letter. † Life of Gresham Professors (1740), by John Ward (who himself succeeded Martyn as Gresham Professor in 1720), PP. 333-34. Spectator, Vol. VII, No. 555. § Ibid, Introduction to the Volume. the principal contributor to the British Merchant. This is an objection which apparently cannot be easily explained away. However we might remember that those were days when journalists changed sides with kaleidoscopic rapidity and even refuted under other names what they wrote under their own. But in the case of Martyn, we must seek for explanation in another quarter. It was not unusual in those days even among honest men to stand for liberal trade relations with one country while opposing the same in the case of another. There was, besides, an interval of twelve years between the Considerations (1701) and The British Merchant (1713); and this was evidently long enough to explain a change of views. Further, there are indications in the British Merchant that its authors viewed the Indian trade in an altogether different light from the French trade. Observe, for example, the following passage in that journal* :-" I very much question whether it ever could be objected against the trade of the East Indies, as has justly been against that of France, that it exhausted the treasure or lessened the value of the Native Commodities and manufactures of our realm.” Although the Considerations is apparently an impartial defence of a principle, it need not be supposed that the author had no self-interest in maintaining such a thesis. Almost every pamphlet on East Indian trade written in that period-especially from 1696 to 1700-was meant to promote the interests of party or faction. The English manufacturers and bullionists were pitted against Indian trade in general, and the interlopers were opposed to the old Company in particular. The Considerations was not definitely meant to serve any of these causes, yet it does not follow that the author had no interests in the matter. It is possible that he was in some way allied to the linen-drapers who, 1696-97, carried on an energetic controversy with Cary. There are striking resemblances between their pamphlets and the Considerations. For instance one of their pamphlets emphatically put the Free Trade position thus† :-"I affirm that it is the interest of England to send their products and manufactures to the best market, and from thence to bring such commodities as they cannot purchase cheaper anywhere else, and the remainder in money which they ought to lay out where they could buy cheapest and by the natural circulation the nation will be enriched," and concluded in the manner of the Considerations: "A Free Trade makes all manner of commodities cheap, the cheapness of commodities empowers our people to work cheaper, the cheapness of work encourages foreign trade, and foreign trade brings wealth and people, and that * Vol. II. p. 144; also Vol. I, pp. 30-31. † Linen Drapers' Rejoinder (813 M. 13, No. 143). |