Middlemen in English Business 373 



ment was in the Barbadoes' and other West Indies' sugar plantations.' 

 EngHshmen stocked plantations of their own or loaned freely to resi- 

 dent planters at high rates. The accounts of tradesmen and shop- 

 keepers in England show that they made much money by lending at 

 usury during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.^ 



The English merchant was not satisfied with the rate of profit 

 which the Dutch merchant made.^ The Dutch did a big business for 

 a small profit, the Enghsh preferred to do a smaller business at a large 

 profit.'' Enghsh merchants professed "to trade for profit and with- 

 drew from any trade which did not keep up to their standard of 

 profit;" for instance, the Turkey trade declined because the merchants 

 regarded it as not worth pursuing.^ The Enghsh merchant had an 

 opportunity which the Dutch did not, in that he could invest his sur- 

 plus in land in his native country, whereas the Dutch soil was so limited 

 that the Dutch merchant had to re-invest his earnings in commerce 

 or in enterprise abroad.^ The large profits of Enghsh trade made it 

 very difficult to recruit the army and navy and to supply the colonies 

 with settlers.^ The standards of gross profits in England had become 

 rated at about 25 per cent, which included the ship's freight and the 

 merchant's expense and net profit: of this 5 per cent was allowed 

 for freight alone.^ But English merchants in the colonies would 

 not deal for as httle profit as they would at London.^ 



It was generally conceded that the merchant should make a greater 

 profit than the prevaihng rate of interest, because of bad debts and 

 other risks. ^° The rate of interest, however, in Holland, was until the 

 fourth decade of the eighteenth century from 2 to 3 per cent 

 lower than in England. For instance, in 1722 the following rates 

 were given'^ as the ruling rates for public and private loans: 



1 Houghton Collection, II, 321-3; Legion, Hist, of Barbadoes; Cimningham, 

 Growth, II, 473. 



2 See exposition in Hall, Eliz. Soc, 48-53. 



3 Gent. Mag., 1737:715. 



^ Culpepper, Plain English, 14; Besant, Tud. Lon., 238; Malyns, Center of the 

 Circle of Commerce; Anderson, Origin, HI, 149, 185; cf. Harris, Collection of 

 Voyages. 



* Horsley, on Maritime Affairs, 30-1. 



^ Culpepper, Plain English, 14. 



7 Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., 250-1. 



» "Tracts on Irish Wealth," 56, 59-60; compare with Prior, List of Absentees, 61. 



9 "Letter from a Merchant," 74. 



1" Barbon, Discourse, 32. 



" Hatton, Comes, Suppl., 3. 



