compelled to go thither when sent and work-houses to receive them

"1

. . the design is to provide places for those who care not to work any where and to make the officers of Parishes industrious to find out such Vermin, when they shall know where to send them, by which means they would better be able to maintain the impotent. The result of the main tendency of thought on this subject was a flood of pamphlets advocating the employment of the "poor," in all manner of ways, concern for their well-being proving very often a cloak for some specious project or other. A sanctimonious writer demands the introduction of flax spinning in " Proposals for building in every county, a working Almshouse or Hospital, as the best expedient to perfect the Trade and manufactory of linen cloth." 3 William Goffe demands the encouragement of sail-cloth making and fishing by means of a tax on all parishes for three years according to the "poor tax rate." The use of the parish poor in the woollen manufactory is a favourite device. Petty demands their employment in what would now be called " Public Utilities." Making all high wayes so broad, firm and even, as whereby the charge and tedium of travelling and carriages may be greatly lessened. The cutting and scouring of Rivers into navigable; the planting of useful trees for timber, delight and fruit in convenient places."

The logical conclusion was that by the application of this method either (1) the poor-law could be dispensed with, since if wages were lowered sufficiently, the sale of products abroad would provide industry with a market and the poor-law simply turned the scale and caused a glut (Defoe) or (2) that the poor-law industries simply became part of the wealth-producing organization of the nation. Both ideas as to employing the poor had the result of causing labour to be regarded simply as a factor of production, standing, as it were, outside "The Nation," an anticipation of the result produced later by the Wages Fund Theory of Wages.

1 Cary, loc. cit., p. 159.

The author of An Appeal to the Parliament concerning the Poor, that there may not be a beggar in England, 1660 (Somers Tracts, 7.520), demands accurate statistics and the settlement of a poor man's office where handicraftsmen and labourers

"

that want work and such as want workmen may enquire."

'Harl. Miscell., 4, p. 489, 1677. This is clearly a projector's pamphlet.

A Loc. cit.

See above, and The Proposals for Promoting the woollen manufactory promoted by several well wishers thereunto, Inhabitants and citizens of London, 1679, 712. g. 16 (18).

• Treatise of Taxes, Vol. I, p. 29: I assume this to be public employment from the context. John Collins (" Accomptant " to the Royal Fishery Company) also demands the employment of the poor in the reclamation of waste lands. Salt and Fishery, 1682, 981, b. 5. Another pamphlet on the fishing trade is James Puckle's England's Path to Wealth and Honour in a dialogue between an Englishman and a Dutchman, 2nd edn., 1700, 1029, 2 g. (4). His Fishing Company is to have the power of "Fathers of the Poor" (a plan obviously based on Child's proposals, Somers Tracts, 11, p. 607) controlling church collections, Poor rates, etc. His argument runs " Gold and silver mines England hath none and in time of Peace no way to get Bullion but by foreign traffick, to which nothing can more conduce than cheap fishing and cheap working and manufacturing the commodities which compose the exports of our kingdom and that is not to be effected except Labour be cheap, which it can never be where Provisions are dear. But the cheaper our Provisions are the cheaper our exports may be afforded."

Two further results may be noted:

1. If the amount of non-profitable relief was to be reduced, it seemed obviously desirable to afford as much employment to labour in industry as possible. Hence came an attack on labour-saving devices and the theory that the most beneficial trades were those which employed most labour. Thus Defoe: "All methods to bring our Trade to be managed by fewer hands than it was before, are in themselves pernicious to England in general, as it lessens the employment of the poor, unhinges their hands from the labour and tends to bring our hands to be inferior to our Employ, which as yet it is not. 'Tis the excellence of our English manufacture that it is so planned as to go through as many hands as 'tis possible; he that contrives to have to go through fewer ought at the same time to provide work for the rest." 1

2. The employment of public funds in industry led to a demand for protection, which the previous assumption strengthened."

The most interesting attack on the "work fund "idea comes from Sir Dudley North. "If to make work for the people," he says, “a Law is made this year to destroy the Trade of the East Indies, some other such law will be wanted the very next. We may well hope, that in time the Navigation of the Thames, of every other river be destroyed, that many may be imployed in the carriage which is now performed by few. By degrees, not an Art or engine to save the labour of hands will be left in England. When we shall be reduced to plain labour, without any manner of art, we shall live at least as well as the wild Indians of America, the Hottentots of Africa, or the Inhabitants of New Holland. As often as I consider these things, I am ready to say with my self, that God has bestowed his blessings upon men that have neither hearts nor skill to use them. For why are we surrounded with the Sea ? Surely that our wants at home might be supplied by our Navigation into other countries, the least and easiest labour. By this we taste the spices of Arabia, yet never feel the scorching sun which brings them forth; we shine in silks which our hands have never wrought; we drink of vineyards which we never planted. The Treasures of those mines are ours in which we have never digged, we only plough the deep and reap the Harvest of every Country in the world." & "Certainly every individual man in England might be employed to some profit to do some work which cannot be done without him; at least the contrary is not evident, as long as England is not built, beautified and improved to the utmost perfection, as long as any country possesses anything which England wants, Spain the gold and silver of America, Holland the Fishing and other Trades, France the wines, as long as champagne

1 Loc. cit., 438, cp. Barbon, Discourse of Trade: "The advantage to the Nation from Trade is from the Customs and from the goods that Imploys most Hands." An idea probably derived from his interest in building schemes.

• Firmin demands the prohibition of goods by Higher Duties, Goffe the prohibition of the export of unwrought goods.

3 Considerations upon the East India Trade, 1701 (1139, g. 3), pp. 58-9.

and burgundy are not drunk in every Parish; some of these things might be appropriated to England." i

At least the erstwhile Turkey merchant cannot be accused of lack of optimism.

IV.

Under which category of thought is the system of economics analysed in the preceding pages to be put? The question is one of some importance.

2

The answer depends upon the view taken as to what was the dominant consideration in the minds of the men of the time. The time was one of intense international rivalry, and the economic writings of the time envisage the economic problems of the day as primarily bearing upon the international position of the Nation. "To buy cheap and sell dear " was not the maxim of the orthodox Free-trader, but seemed the obvious policy to pursue in order to oust Holland and to rival France. The phrase was, in other words, applied to the economic activities of the State considered as an entity, and did not primarily apply to the individual merchant at all. Indeed, the current assumption that the State might lose though the individual gained made it obvious that any facile coincidence of private and public advantage was not yet part of the intellectual equipment of the time." It was only when the identification of private with national profit began to be made that any advance could take place.

The theory of employment outlined in the previous pages was justified on the basis of the current theory of international trade, and is thus a mercantile theory in the Smithian sense of the word. The peculiar importance of the international trade views of the day has been, to my mind, unfortunately obscured by the extension of the meaning of the term "Mercantile System to cover a wide ground-that in which it is co-extensive with State power in an absolutist sense.

Another view has recently been trenchantly stated by Professor Levy. He sees in the labour theory of the Restoration the promptings of the Puritan conscience, transforming itself by contact with economic facts into a half-fledged theory of laissez-faire. Genetically regarded, this view cannot lightly be dismissed, yet it appears to be somewhat exaggerated.

1 Ibid., pp. 54-5.

G. B. Hertz, English Public Opinion after the Restoration.

"The art is when we deal with strangers, to sell dear and to buy cheap." Fortrey, loc. cit., p. 29.

A letter to the Honourable A(rthur) M(oore), Commissioner of Trade and Plantation, 1713. 1029, e. 9 (10): “A merchant may gain a thousand pounds to his country and yet gain nothing, nay, even lose by the adventure himself." "In what any single person shall be a loser, there, endeavours will be made to hinder the publick gain." Fortrey, ibid., 12.

Economic Liberalism, 1913.

See specially chapters vi and vii.

1. The influence of Puritan thought seems undoubtedly most marked in the emphasis placed upon the evils of idleness. In so far as the economists of the time urged reformatory methods they were no doubt profoundly influenced by the Puritan theory of morals.1

2

2. The harshness of tone towards the poor attributed to this ground can be exaggerated. Thus William Goffe, a regicide and a Puritan, argues that "the poor ought to be encouraged and mercifully dealt with, and kindly used, until their slow hands be brought to ready working and ought at first to have the highest price the commodity will bear to themselves," the expenses of training to be paid by the parish. So Firmin, who argues for his scheme on the ground that it will ease the minds of all that have any bowels of compassion" and increase their enjoyment of the good things of this world, as well as making property more secure and confirming the hopes of Christians, and appearing among the elect on the Day of Judgment, pleads for discrimination: "Do not imagine that all the poor people in England are like unto those vagrants you find up and down the streets. No, there are many thousands whose necessities are very great, and yet they do what they can by their honest labour to help themselves; and many times they would do more than they do but for want of employment."

4

3. A true theory of laissez-faire would have rested content with high wages, provided they were the product of "natural" laws. The evil influence of high wages seems, during the period under review, to be far more the expression of an employing class desiring cheap labour in order to capture foreign markets, an axiom of business not entirely alien to our own day. The enterprising business man of the day was in conflict with the tendency of his employees to remain content with a fixed standard of comfort. Of course, in so far as progressive" ideas were the result of Puritanism, the two streams of thought fused. But it was the theory of international trade which gave the characteristic turn to the thought of the day. Moreover, to use the work-house as a means of beating down wages was not laissez-faire, but the contrary. The laissez-faire attitude surely implies an absence of State aid in any form.

1 See spec. Cary, loc. cit. : "Nor is God more honoured than He is among these industrious people, who abhor vice on equal principles of Religion and good Husbandry, Labour being usually a barrier against sin, which doth generally come in at the doors of idleness." p. 166.

Vide D.N.B.

8 Loc. cit.

4 Loc. cit., pp. 9, II.

Loc. cit., pp. 9, II.

Cary was not, as we have seen, in favour of low wages.

It is worth noting that the pamphlet, the Grand Concern of England, which, inter alia, desires the abolition of coffee houses and stage coaches and caravans, is not at all liberally inspired, although it demands lower wages in order to achieve a monopoly of foreign trade! It is characteristic of the difficulty of summing up the thought of the day that Child (who believed in the efficacy of a law to reduce the rate of interest) argued that wages varied "naturally." "Such as our employment is for people, so many will our people be, and if we should imagine we have in England employment

The necessity of ousting England's trade rivals appears, after all, to have carried the day.

but for one hundred People and we have born and bred amongst us one hundred and fifty people, I say the fifty must away from us or starve or be hanged to prevent it... If by reason of the accommodation of living in our foreign plantations we have evacuated more of our people than we should have done, if we had no such plantations, I say .. that decrease would procure its own remedy, for much want of people would procure greater wages and greater wages, if our laws gave encouragement, would procure us a supply of people without the charge of breeding them, as the Dutch are." Loc. cit., 127.