Читать книгу An Essay on the State of England. In Relation to Its Trade, Its Poor, and Its Taxes, for Carrying on the Present War Against France онлайн

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Tillage.Agriculture is that whereby we raise our Corn by turning up the Earth, the several sorts whereof are Wheat, Rye, Barly, Pease, Beans, Fetches, Oats, which not only afford nourishment to ourselves and the Beasts we use in labour, but serve for Trade, as they give Imployment to ourPeople at home, and are Transported abroad more or less according to the overplus of onrexpence, and the want of our Neighbours, besides the great Quantities used in our Navigation.

These Products of both sorts are clear profit to the Nation as they are raised from Earth and Labour, whose Advantages arise chiefly from their being Exported either in their own kind orwhen Manufactered, the Remainder spent at Home tending only to supplying the use, notadvancing the Wealth of the Nation; now these Exports being according to the Rates and Prizesthey bear in other Countries, and those Rates arising from the Proportion their Lands hold withours in their Yearly Rents, are not so great in specie as when workt up, Butter is the greatest,wherewith we supply many Forreign Markets, and did formerly more, till by making it bad andusing Tricks to increase its weight, we have much lost that Trade, and are now almost beat outof it by Ireland, which every day makes better as we make worse, besides they undersell us inthe Price, as they do also in Beef, occasioned by the low Rents of their Lands, and moreespecially by the Act of Prohibition, which put that Nation on finding out a Trade in ForreignMarkets for what they were denyed to bring hither, which being Exported thence direct yeildsthem greater profit, the sweetness whereof hath encouraged them to take more care, and thishath raised them from a Sloathful to be an Industrious People. As for Corn, Forreign Marketsare supplyed therewith both from thence and other places in the Sound, also from the WesternIslands, cheaper then the price of our Lands will admit. But our Plantations have still someDependance on us for our Product, and would more if that Act was removed, and Ireland madea Colony on the same Terms with them.