644 ON THE PRICE OF FOREIGN PRODUCE. 



employment to his navy he would get great treasure, for that 

 navy might by freight or otherwise get that which strangers 

 come and carry from his kingdom, which would be a great 

 profit to his people, and the money would stay in the country, 

 for this would be the object which his navy would first effect. 

 I will show you how the King of France, whenever he pleases, 

 without leaving his palace, could destroy the whole great navy 

 of England. It is well known and certain that the employ- 

 ment of that great marine is in the shipment of salt from 

 Brittany and Guienne, and its freight to cold countries. Again, 

 it is the practice of this navy to come to Guienne in the 

 vintage time, and again in March, in order to ship wine to 

 England and other countries. 



' The King should order that no safe-conduct should be given 

 to any English vessel of more than a hundred tons burden, 

 and forbid the carriage of wine and salt in any ships from 

 England. In this way the navy of England would rot in idle- 

 ness, and the great navies of the cold countries would have the 

 profit which the English marine is now possessed of.' The 

 writer then proceeds to enforce his position by pointing to the 

 alliance between France and Spain, another country of great 

 naval strength, and to the lordship of the French King over 

 Genoa, whose galleys are thus under his orders. 



These references to the suggestions of the French herald, 

 that the King should retaliate on English commercial enter- 

 prise (discredited perhaps by some doubtful transactions of 

 English merchants in the narrow seas) by a stringent Naviga- 

 tion Act, are introduced in order to show that in the fifteenth 

 century the English had the greater part of the carrying trade 

 of Western Europe, and in particular that of Western France. 

 The suzerainty of the French King over Brittany was only that 

 of the slightest kind as yet; the acquisition of Guienne, a 

 possession of the English kings for three centuries, was only 

 recent, and events had shown that the Gascons would not suffer 

 their trade to be tampered with, any more than the Russian 

 nobles at the conclusion of the eighteenth century would allow 



