1921 521 Trading with the Enemy and the Corunna Packets, i68q-q? DURING the French war of William III, the governments of England and the United Provinces made more or less deter- mined and more or less successful attempts to cut off all trade between their subjects and the enemy. An examination of these attempts will throw light on the question of how far commercial measures were then used as an auxiliary to military action. It will incidentally illustrate the history of economic ideas, for even in peace this policy had prevailed for a short time in England a few years before. In the period in which the opposition to Charles II assumed the outline of the historic whig party, several converging causes had led its members to advocate the strongest commercial action against France. 1 The French trade not only provided the Crown with much of that part of its revenue which was not controlled by parliament, but its overbalance against England, which led to a considerable drain of gold, caused the economic theories of the time to condemn it. When Colbert introduced in 1674 what was practically a prohibitive tariff against English manufactures, the inequality became still greater. Commercial resentment mingled with the rising political feeling against the French in the parliamentary debates of 1675, and in 1677/8 the commons, by a kind of tacking, forced on the govern- ment an act 2 which prohibited for three years under penalties the importation of * French wine, vinegar, brandy, linnen, cloath, silks, salt, paper, or any manufacture made of or mixed with silke, threade, woole, hair, gold or silver or leather being of the growth, product or manufacture of any of the dominions or territories of the French king '. The mercantilist argument for the prohibi- tion was stated in the preamble : ' the wealth and treasure of the nation hath been much exhausted by the importation and consumption of the French commodities. ' In the event of war or reprisals, such a prohibition would raise a problem which, as we shall see, proved far from easy in the time of William III. 1 See Ashley, ' The Tory Origin of Free Trade Policy ' in Surveys, Historic and Economic. 2 29 & 30 Car. II, c. 1 {Statutes of the Bealm, v. 852).
