158 The Merchants of the Staple, S^c. 



sufficiently sensible of the great loss we were like to be at, if some 

 way or other were not found out to consume our wool; and certainly 

 they were worthy patriots for their countrj'', that first moved for 

 and afterwards pursued it to an Act, however it hath not been 

 received or obeyed as it worthily deserved. We will therefore 

 examine and give some guess how much wool might have been 

 buried since that Act of Parliament was first made, without any 

 disparagement to the dead, or to the surviving friends of the 

 deceased, and we shall find that a very great quantity of the wool 

 now in the kingdom out of cloth, had been at this day under 

 ground." He then goes into a calculation of the average number 

 of deaths per annum and the quantity of wool required to carry 

 out the provisions of this Act of Parliament and comes to this 

 conclusion ; — " In every ten years we shall spend in this way about 

 twenty hundred pounds of wool with this advantage to our poor, 

 that it is first made into cloth. So that had that Act of Parliament 

 been duly observed, as it was our interest to do, we may plainly 

 perceive what quantity of wool we had by this time buried in our 

 kingdom. We should not only spend an incredible quantity of our 

 own wool manufactured by ourselves, but save above three-score 

 thousand Pounds sterling of our money which we lay out for Linen- 

 cloth purposely for that use ; equivalent to a story of one of our 

 kings who finding a great glut of cloth in the kingdom beyond 

 their vent and trade for it, bought it and caused it all to be burnt. 

 And the Dutch, those subtle traders, as it is generally reported of 

 them, where their ships are freighted with their spices in the 

 East Indies for that year's provision into Europe, they return the 

 rest in smoak, by causing the over plus to be burnt at their own 

 factories : so that the consumption of every growth of our wool is 

 of absolute necessity towards the improvement of our rents and for 

 the recovering that third or fourth part of the real value of our 

 kingdom, now lost since the fall and low price thereof." 



Forty years have not yet passed since this Act, thus gravely 

 defended, was repealed. We smile oftentimes, as we read of the 

 ever changing policy, oscillating hither and thither, at the whim 

 as it seems, of the ruling powers, — of the strange, short-sighted 



