PART II-CHAPTER IX.
WOOLL.
[THE author appears to have merely commenced this chapter; which, as it now stands in the manuscript, contains little more than is here printed. The three succeeding chapters are connected in their subjects with the present. - J. B.]
THIS nation is the most famous for the great quantity of wooll of any in the world; and this county hath the most sheep and wooll of any other. The down-wooll is not of the finest of England, but of about the second rate. That of the common-field is the finest.
Quaere, if Castle Comb was not a staple for wooll, or else a very great wooll-market? ___________________________________
Mr. Ludlowe, of the Devises, and his predecessours have been wooll- breakers [brokers] 80 or 90 yeares, and hath promised to assist me. ___________________________________
Quaere, if it would not bee the better way to send our wooll beyond the sea again, as in the time of the staple? For the Dutch and French doe spinn finer, work cheaper, and die better. Our cloathiers combine against the wooll-masters, and keep their spinners but just alive: they steale hedges, spoile coppices, and are trained up as nurseries of sedition and rebellion.
[For a long series of years the clothiers, or manufacturers, and the wool-growers, or landowners, entertained opposite opinions respecting the propriety of exporting wool; and numerous acts of parliament were passed at different times encouraging or restricting its exportation, as either of these conflicting interests happened to prevail for the time with the legislature. The landowners were generally desirous to export their produce, without restriction, to foreign markets, and to limit the importation of competing wool from abroad. The manufacturers, on the contrary, wished for the free importation of those foreign wools, without an admixture of which the native produce cannot be successfully manufactured; whilst they were anxious to restrain the exportation of British wool, from an absurd fear of injury to their own trade. Some curious particulars of the contest between these parties, and of the history of legislation on the subject, will be found in Porter's Progress of the Nation and McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary and Statistical Account of the British Empire; and more particularly in Bischoff's History of Wool (1842). The wool trade is now free from either import or export duties. - J. B.]