CHAPTER IX.
FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE ACCESSION OE GEORGE III.
A.D. 1688–1760.
The Revolution, by plunging us into a war with France, at once altered a condition of things under which our foreign trade was rapidly growing and strengthening, in the peace and free intercourse between the two countries which had subsisted ever since the prohibitory act of 1678 had been repealed on the accession of James II. In the course of the eight years of war which followed the Revolution the customs fell off considerably; and in the interval between 1688 and 1696 the English shipping annually cleared outwards appears to have declined from 190,533 tons to 91,767, the foreign from 95,267 to 83,024, and the value of the merchandise exported (as officially estimated) from 4,086,087l. to 2,729,520l., or by about a third of its whole amount.[1] "Within the same space also the revenue of the post-office is stated to have been reduced from 76,318l. to 58,672l.; which may be taken as an evidence that the pressure of the war was not confined to our foreign trade, but was felt throughout our social system.
At the same time, no doubt, several branches of domestic industry might receive an impulse from the foreign supply being cut off. But those of our manufactures that derived an advantage in this way appear to have been only a few of inferior importance. Before the war we were accustomed to import considerable quantities of men's hats from Havre-de-Grace and other places in Normandy: this article we now set about making for ourselves with such success, that after some time English hats came to be both better and cheaper than French. The finer
- ↑ Chalmers's Estimate, p. 68, from accounts in the Exchequer books, communicated by Mr. Astle.
