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Having thus vindicated our people where they are really not deserving blame, let us look forward from hence and see with the same justice where they are in another case likewise less to blame than is generally imagined; namely, in the white fishing, or the taking of cod-fish in these northern seas, which is also represented as if it was so plentiful of fish that any quantity might be taken and cured, and so the French, the Scots, and the Portuguese, might be supplied from hence much cheaper and more to advantage than by going so long a voyage as to the banks of Newfoundland.

This also is a mistake, and the contrary is evident; that there is a good white fishing upon the coast, as well of the north part of the British coast as on the east side of Scotland, is very true; the Scots, to give them their due, do cure a tolerable quantity of fish, even in or near the frith of Edinburgh; also there is a good fishery for cod on the west side, and among the islands of the Leuze, and the other parts called the western islands of Scotland; but the mistake lies in the quantity, which is not sufficient to supply the demand in those ports mentioned above, nor is it such as makes it by far so easy to load a ship as at Newfoundland, where it is done in the one-fifth part of the time, and consequently so much cheaper; and the author of this has found this to be so by experience.

Yet it cannot be said with justice that the Scots’ fishermen are negligent, and do not improve this fishing to advantage, for that really they do kill and cure as many as can be easily done to make them come within a price, and more cannot be done; that is to say, it would be to no purpose to do it; for it will for ever be true in trade, that what cannot be done to advantage, may be said not to be possible to be done; because gain is the end of commerce, and the merchant cannot do what he cannot get by.

It may be true that in the herring fishery the consumption might be increased at home, and in some places also abroad, and so far that fishery is not so fully pursued; but I do not see that the increase of it can be very considerable, there being already a prodigious quantity cured more than ever in Ireland on every side of that kingdom, and also on the west of England; but if it may be increased, so much the more will be the advantage of the commerce; of which by itself.

But from this I come to the main article of the British trade, I mean our wool, or, as it is generally expressed, the woollen manufacture, and this is what I mean, when I said as above, spin and live.

In this likewise I must take the liberty to say, and insist upon it, that the English people cannot be said to be idle or slothful, or to neglect the advantages which are put into their hands of the greatest manufactures in Europe, if not in the whole world.

On the other hand, the people of England have run up their manufactures to such a prodigy of magnitude, that though it is extended into almost every part of the known world, I mean, the world as it is known in trade; yet even that whole world is scarce equal to its consumption, and is hardly able to take off the quantity; the negligence therefore of the English people is not so much liable to reproof in this part, as some pretend to tell us; the trade of our woollen manufacture being evidently increased within these few years past, far beyond what it ever was before.

I know abundance of our people talk very dismal things of the decay of our woollen manufacture, and that it is declined much they insist upon it; being prohibited in many places and countries abroad, of their setting up other manufactures of their own in the room of it, of their pretending to mimick and imitate it, and supply themselves with the produce of their own land, and the labour of their own people, and indeed France has for many years gone some length in this method of erecting woollen manufactures in the room of ours, and making their own productions serve instead of our completely finished manufacture: but all these imitations are weak and unperforming, and show abundantly how little reason we have to apprehend their endeavours, or that they will be able to supplant our manufacture there or any where else; for that even in France itself, where the imitation of our manufactures is carried on to the utmost perfection; yet they are obliged to take off great quantities of our finest and best goods; and such is the necessity of their affairs, that they to this day run them in, that is, import them clandestinely at the greatest risk, in spite of the strictest prohibition, and of the severest penalties, death and the galleys excepted; a certain token that their imitation of our manufactures is so far from pleasing and supplying other parts of the world, that they are not sufficient to supply, or good enough to please themselves.