Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/154

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152
HISTORY OF

within forty years, and has occasioned this great call of a commodity almost peculiar to us." The quantity of tin raised from the mines, however, was still greater than the demands of the home-market and of foreign countries together took off our hands: at the time when Davenant wrote, her majesty, for whose behoof the mines were wrought, had unsold between 4000 and 5000 tons, or as much as would supply the consumption of the next four or five years. "As the case stands at present," he adds, "Holland is the great magazine for tin; the necessities of such as have it upon their hands, either in merchandize or security, drive it thither, and the Dutch set what price they please upon this rich product of England, to the damage of the public." He proposes that a thousand tons of the dead stock should be coined into tin halfpence and farthings. The annual quantity of tin that was raised in England, however, went on increasing from this time instead of being diminished:—the quantity which had accumulated in Davenant's time is only about a years produce of the mines at present. He next proceeds to our exports of corn. This, he observes, "is, in a manner, a new exportation, arising to us from the war, which has in other countries so employed the hands of their people that they could not till the ground, or from dearths or plagues, wherewith divers nations have been afflicted for these last twenty-three years." Formerly, only a very small quantity of grain was sent from the port of London to Holland, Spain, Denmark, Africa, the Plantations, Italy, and Portugal: in 1663 the entire estimated value of the com so exported was only 4315l., and in 1699 not more than 2011l. "Whereas now," continues our author, "we export grain of all sorts to Africa, Canaries, Denmark and Norway, East Country, Flanders, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Madeiras, Newfoundland, Portugal, Russia, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Venice, Isles of Guernsey, &c., and English Plantations." In the eleven years from 1700 to 1710, inclusive, the average total export of grain from England was of the estimated value of 274,171l.; of which the value of that entered for exportation to Hol-