effect of our own great wisdom in discouraging agriculture.
The kind liberty granted us of wearing Indian stuffs, and calicoes, to gratify the vanity and folly of our women; which, beside the profit to England, is an inconceivable loss to us, forcing the weavers to beg in our streets, or transport themselves to foreign countries.
The prodigious loss to us, and gain to England, by selling them all our wool at their own rates; whereof the manufacture exceeds above ten times the prime cost: a proceeding without example in the christian or heathen world.
Our own wool returned upon us in English manufactures, to our infinite shame and damage, and the great advantage of England.
The full profit of all mines accruing to England; an effect of great negligence and stupidity.
An affectation among us of liking all kind of goods made in England.
These and many other articles, which I cannot recollect at present, are agreed by judicious men to amount to near seven hundred thousand pounds per ann. clear profit to England[1]. And upon the whole, let any man look into those authors who write upon the subject of commerce, he shall find, that there is not one single article in the essentials or circumstances of trade, whereby a country can be a loser, which we do not possess in the highest perfection; somewhat in every particular, that bears a kind of
- ↑ Many of the above articles have been since particularly computed in "A List of the Absentees of Ireland, and the yearly Value of their Estates and Incomes spent abroad, by Thomas Prior, esquire."
