Middlemen in English Business 417 



of this Island."^ In the Directory of 1677 a list of nearly two thousand 

 merchants was drawn up; a great many of them had houses in the 

 suburbs of London and did business from their homes; they dwelt at 

 Highgate, Newington Green, Islington, Clerkenwell Green, Hackney, 

 Hogsden, Bethnall Green, Kingsland, Moorfields, Spitalfields, and 

 Mile-end. The capital accumulated by commerce in the city spread 

 itself out over Surrey, Middlesex, Essex, and Kent in mansions and 

 estates, the envy of the landed gentry. Provincial towns like Derby 

 were yet at the end of the seventeenth century without a wholesale 

 tradesman. 



London was the center of the commerce of Great Britain. The 

 metropolis of the Isles, of Europe, of the world; centrally located with 

 respect to the Kingdom and to western Europe; a port with a com- 

 modious harbor — in all it had a commanding position for land and 

 maritime commerce. 



A large fraction of the population of England was concentrated in 

 this city. A decade before the close of the seventeenth century the 

 number of its people was put at 696,000.- A calculation based on the 

 imports of sea-coal gave for 1690, 530,000, and for 1716, 630,000.^ 

 An estimate of the population of England and Wales, based on the 

 returns from the hearth duties, was 8,000,000 for 1690.^ Chalmers 

 put it at 7,000,000,^' and King at 5,500,000. It appears that about 

 one-tenth of the people were Londoners in 1690. An estimate in the 

 third cjuarter of the eighteenth century distributed a population of 

 6,000,000, allowing 750,000 to London and 950,000 to all the other 

 market towns with more than 150 houses each, and the remaining 

 4,300,000 to the country.^ This ga\e London one-eighth of the people 

 of England and Wales. 



The concentration of trade was still more marked, as will appear 

 from the Table" below for 1685-6: 



London Outporls Total 



Imports into. 569,126 (45%) 7LS,293 1,284,419 



Exports 409,563 (80%) 105,665 515,228 



1 Roberts, Map, 234. 

 - Anderson, Origin, II, 578; IV, 690. 

 3 Gent. Mag., 1736:355. 

 * Anderson, Origin, II, 594. 



'" Chalmers, Estimate, 48-59. See the estimates given in Macpherson, Annals, 

 II, 68, 634, 674; III, 134. 



^ Postlethwayt, Diet., s. v. People; cf. estimates by the census authorities, 1801. 

 " Data from Br. Mer., I, 282-305. 



