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But to proceed: not only our English colonies and factories are increased, as also the Portuguese in the Brazils, and in the south part of Africa; not only the factories of the English and Dutch in the East Indies are increased, and the number of Europeans there being increased call for a greater quantity of European goods than ever; but even the Spaniards, and their colonies in the West Indies, I mean in New Spain, and other dominions of the Spaniards in America, are increased in people, and that not so much the Spaniards themselves, though they too are more numerous than ever, but the civilized free Indians, as they are called, are exceedingly multiplied.

These are Indians in blood, but being native subjects of Spain, know no other nation, nor do they speak any other language than Spanish, being born and educated among them. They are tradesmen, handicrafts, and bred to all kinds of business, and even merchants too, as the Spaniards are, and some of them exceeding rich; of these they tell us there are thirty thousand families in the city of Lima only, and doubtless the numbers of these increase daily.

As all these go clothed like Spaniards, as well themselves as their wives, children, and servants, of which they have likewise a great many, so it necessarily follows that they greatly increase the consumption of European goods, and that the demand of English manufactures in particular increases in proportion, these manufactures being more than two-thirds of the ordinary habit or dress of those people, as it is also of the furniture of their houses; all which they take from their first patrons, the Spaniards.

It will seem a very natural inquiry here, how I can pretend to charge the English nation with indolence or negligence in their labouring or working their woollen manufactures; when it is apparent they work up all the wool which their whole nation produces, that the whole growth and produce of their sheep is wrought up by them, and that they buy a prodigious quantity from Ireland and Scotland, and work up all that too, and that with this they make such an infinite quantity of goods, that they, as it were, glut and gorge the whole world with their manufactures.

My answer is positive and direct, viz., that notwithstanding all this, they are chargeable with an unaccountable, unjustifiable, and, I had almost said, a most scandalous indolence and neglect, and that in respect to this woollen manufacture in particular; a neglect so gross, that by it they suffer a manifest injury in trade. This neglect consists of three heads:

1. They do not work up all the wool which they might come at, and which they ought to work up, and about which they have still spare hands enough to set to work.

2. They with difficulty sell off or consume the quantity of goods they make; whereas they might otherwise vend a much greater quantity, both abroad and at home.

3. They do not sufficiently apply themselves to the improving and enlarging their colonies abroad, which, as they are already increased, and have increased the consumption of the manufactures, so they are capable of being much further improved, and would thereby still further improve and increase the manufactures. By so much as they do not work up the wool, by so much they neglect the advantage put into their hands; for the wool of Great Britain and Ireland is certainly a singular and exclusive gift from Heaven, for the advantage of this great and opulent nation. If Heaven has given the wool, and we do not improve the gift by manufacturing it all up, so far we are to be reproached with indolence and neglect; and no wonder if the wool goes from Ireland to France by whole shiploads at a time; for what must the poor Irish do with their wool? If they manufacture it we will not let them trade with those manufactures, or export them beyond sea. Our reasons for that prohibition are indeed very good, though too long to debate in this place: but no reason can be alleged that can in any sense of the thing be justifiable, why we should not either give leave to export the manufactures, or take the wool.