PART IL-CHAPTER IX. 



WOOLL. 



[ THE author appears to have merely commenced this chapter ; wliich, as it now stands in the ma- 

 nuscript, contains little more than is here printed. The three succeeding chapters are connected in 

 their subjects with the present. J. B.] 



THIS nation is the most famous for the great quantity of wooll of any in the world ; and this 

 county hath the most sheep and wooll of any other. The down-wooll is not of the finest of England, 

 but of about the second rate. That of the common-field is the finest. 



Quaere, if Castle Comb was not a staple for wooll, or else a very great wooll-market ? 



Mr. Ludlowe, of the Devises, and his predecessours have been wooll-breakers [brokers] 80 or 90 

 ycares, and hath promised to assist me. 



Quaere, if it would not bee the better way to send our wooll beyond the sea again, as in the time 

 of the staple ? For the Dutch and French doe spinn finer, work cheaper, and die better. Our 

 doathiers combine against the wooll-masters, and keep their spinners but just alive : they steale 

 hedges, spoile coppices, and are trained up as nurseries of sedition and rebellion. 



[ For a long series of years the clothiers, or manufacturers, and the wool-growers, or landowners, 

 entertained opposite opinions respecting the propriety of exporting wool ; and numerous acts of parlia- 

 ment were passed at different times encouraging or restricting its exportation, as either of these con- 

 flicting interests happened to prevail for the time with the legislature. The landowners were generally 

 desirous to export their produce, without restriction, to foreign markets, and to limit the importation 

 of competing wool from abroad. The manufacturers, on the contrary, wished for the free importa- 

 tion of those foreign wools, without an admixture of which the native produce cannot be suc- 

 cessfully manufactured ; whilst they were anxious to restrain the exportation of British wool, from 

 an absurd fear of injury to their own trade. Some curious particulars of the contest between these 

 parties, and of the history of legislation on the subject, will be found in Porter's Progress of the 

 Nation and MCulloch's Commercial Dictionary and Statistical Account of the British Empire; and 

 more particularly in Bischoff's History of Wool (1842). The wool trade is now free from either 

 import or export duties. J. B.] 



