“The commodities that we chiefly receive from the East Indies are calicoes, muslins, Indian wrought silks, pepper, saltpetre, indigo, &c. The advantage of the Company is chiefly in their muslins and Indian silks, (a great value in these commodities being comprehended in a small bulk,) and these becoming the general wear in England.”—p. 4. “Fashion is truly termed a witch; the dearer and scarcer any commodity, the more the mode; 30s. a yard for muslins, and only the shadow of a commodity when procured.”—p. 11.
So sagacious and far-sighted an author as Daniel de Foe (Author of Robinson Crusoe) did not escape the general notion, that it was not merely injurious to the woollen and silk manufactures, a but also a national evil, TO HAVE CLOTHING CHEAP FROM ABROAD RATHER THAN TO MANUFACTURE IT DEAR AT HOME. In his Weekly Review, which contains so many opinions on trade, credit, and currency far beyond the age, he thus laments the large importations of Indian goods.
“The general fancy of the people runs upon East India goods to that degree, that the chintz and painted calicoes, which before were only made use of for carpets, quilts, &c., and to clothe children and ordinary people, become now the dress of our ladies; and such is the power of a mode as we saw our persons of quality dressed in stuffs which but a few years before their chambermaids would have thought too ordinary for them: the chintz was advanced from lying upon their floors to their backs, from the foot-cloth to the petticoat; and even the queen herself at this time was pleased to appear in China silks and calico. Nor was this all, but it crept into our houses, closets, and bed-chambers; curtains, cushions, chairs, and at last beds themselves, were nothing but calicoes or Indian stuffs; and in short, almost everything that used to be made of wool or silk, relating either to the dress of the women or the furniture of our houses, was supplied by the Indian trade.”
“Above half of the (woollen) manufacture was entirely lost, half of the people scattered and ruined, and all this by the intercourse of the East India trade.”—Weekly Review, January 31st, 1708.
However exaggerated and absurd De Foe’s estimate of the injury caused to the woollen manufacture, as manifested by the small value of the whole importations of Indian fabrics, at that time, as well as (much more decisively) by the experience of recent times, when the woollen manufacture has sustained the incomparably more formidable competition of the English cotton manufacture, it is evident from his testimony, and that of other writers, that Indian calicoes, muslins, and chintzes, had become common in England at the close of the seventeenth century. De Foe’s complaint was not of an evil existing in 1708, when he wrote, but of one a few years earlier; for he says in another place, that the “Prohibition of Indian goods” had “averted the ruin of English manufactures, and revived their prosperity.” This prohibition took place by the Act 11 and 12 William III. cap. 10., (1700,) which forbid the introduction of Indian silks and printed calicoes for domestic use, either as apparel or furniture, under a penalty of £200 on the wearer or seller, and as this Act did not prevent the continued use of the goods, which were probably smuggled from the continent of Europe, other Acts for the same purpose were passed at a later date.
A volume published in the year 1728, entitled “A Plan of the English Commerce,” shows that the evil of a consumption of Indian manufactures still prevailed, and that it was ascribed to a cause for which the writer saw no remedy, namely, the will of the ladies, or, in his own words, their “passion for their fashion.” The other countries of Europe are represented as equally suffering from Indian competition and female perverseness, and as attempting in the same way to find a remedy in legislative prohibition. Holland was an honorable exception. The author says—
“The calicoes are sent from the Indies by land into Turkey, by land and inland seas into Muscovy and Tartary, and about by long-sea into Europe and America, till in general they are become a grievance, and almost all the European nations but the Dutch restrain and prohibit them.”—p. 180.
“Two things,” says the writer, “among us are too ungovernable, viz. our passions and our fashions.
“Should I ask the ladies whether they would dress by law, or clothe by act of parliament, they would ask me whether they were to be statute fools, and to be made pageants and pictures of?—whether the sex was to be set up for our jest, and the parliament had nothing to do but make Indian queens of them?—that they claim liberty as well as the men, and as they expect to do what they please, and say what they please, so they will wear what they please, and dress how they please.
“It is true that the liberty of the ladies, their passion for their fashion, has been frequently injurious to the manufactures of Great Britain, and is so still in some cases; but I do not see so easy a remedy for that, as for some other things of the like nature. The ladies have suffered some little restraint that way, as in the wearing East India silks, instead of English; and calicoes and other things instead of worsted stuffs and the like; and we do not see they are pleased with it.”—p. 253.