Middlemen in English Business 413 



thirds as many merchants "as all the rest of Europe put together ;"'■ 

 that there was no nation that had "so many true downright Mer- 

 chants," who drove "all their trade upon their own Capital, as the 

 English."- And during the next twenty years, according to another 

 writer, the number of merchants in London, Bristol and Liverpool 

 trebled.^ Defoe was very profuse in relating how different trades had 

 "monstrously increased" in London, causing such "alterations in the 

 trading places in London" that, if one "recollected how things stood in 

 London about fifty years" before, he would "be struck with surprise 

 at the changes made in the time."^ And it was to this increase in the 

 number of manufacturers and shopkeepers that he ascribed the in- 

 crease of trade "up to such a prodigy of magnitude."^ 



For want of census statistics the truth of these opinions cannot be 

 surely tested. The evidence is cumulative, however, and to one gen- 

 eral tenor, \dz., that the commercial population was rapidly increas- 

 ing. Some statistical estimates were made. In 1677 there were in 

 London 1786 merchants at least.^ In 1688 King estimated the com- 

 mercial population of England at 246,000; in 1769, Young allowed 

 700,000 as engaged in commerce.'^ Defoe thought the total trades- 

 man population of Great Britain in 1745, including their servants, 

 apprentices, and journeymen was nearly two millions.^ The most 

 definite and specific, as w^ell as the most probable, results in a statis- 

 tical way may be had by comparing the estimates of population by 

 King in 1688 and those by Postlethwayt in 1750. 



The first of the accompanying Tables' gives the number of families, 

 the average number of persons per family, and the total number of 

 persons, in each of three classes into which they divided the commer- 

 cial population. The Table concludes with the total number of 

 persons in Great Britain. 



1 Brit. Mer., XXXV. 



2 Ibid., XXXVII. 



' "Late Improvements," quoted in Smith, Mem., II, 314; also paraphrased in 

 Gent. Mag., 1739:478. 



' Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 235-9 (1745). 



= Defoe, Plan of Eng. Com., 101-3. 



'^ ''London Director>-;" see also, Br. Mer., XXXW 



'■ See Hobson, Mod. Cap., 22, for his opinions on the distribution of the popu- 

 lation among the industries. 



8 Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., II, 210. 



' King's estimates are given in Davenant, Works, II, 184; Prothero, Eng. .\gr., 

 453-4; Chalmers, Estimate, 203. Postlethwayt's estimates are given in his dic- 

 tionarj", s. w People. 



