Middlemen in English Business 



123 



TABLE C. 

 Shipping cleared^ 



TONNAGE ANNUAL 

 AVERAGE 



INDEX NUMBER 



1663-1669 



1668 



1696 



1697 



1700-1702 



1709 



1712 



1713-1715 



1718 



1726-1728 

 1736-1738 

 1739-1741 

 1749-1751 

 1755-1757 

 1760 



Tons 



143,000 

 286,000 

 175 000 

 245,000 

 317,000 

 289,000. 

 356,000 

 448,000 

 444,000 

 456,000 

 502,000 

 471,000 

 661,000 

 525,000 

 574,000 



45 



90 



55 



80 



100 



90 



112 



141 



140 



144 



160 



150 



209 



163 



181 



Statistical data for internal commerce are almost entirely wanting. 

 The total consumption of the English people was variously esti- 

 mated to be between 42,000,000 and 60,000,000 pounds sterling,^ 

 in the second decade of the eighteenth century. Of this, between 

 4,000,000 and 5,000,000 was imported; the ratio of the consumption of 

 foreign and domestic goods was one-tenth or one-fifteenth. The 

 ratio of exportations to home consumption, i.e. of the foreign and 

 home markets was one-sixth. In 1760, Macpherson, stating the 

 results of some one's else calculation, gave the ratio of these two 

 markets as one-thirty-second.^ The average annual coastwise coal 

 shipment from the Tyne progressed from 336,000 tons in the decade 

 1661 to 1670, to 482,000 tons in the first decade of the eighteenth 

 century."* The sheep brought to Smithfield yearly about 1731 were 

 568,000; in 1760 they numbered 617,000.'^ The cloth output of 

 West Riding increased from about 27,000 broads in 1726 to 49,000 

 in 1760, and narrows, which were first manufactured in 1737, 



1 Chalmers, Estimate, 69, 234, 256-7. 



2 Br. Mer., 165, 167; Hobson, Mod. Cap. 12-13. 

 ' Macpherson, Annals, III, 340 note. 

 •'Surtees, 105: 260. 



^ Anderson, Origin, IV, 156. 



