"Never tell me!" cried Short again. "You do not really think that the French sell at the rate our shopkeepers say they do! It is all a trick of the people at home, to spite those they have been jealous of so long. They may starve us; but the law will be too strong for them, sooner or later."
"I rather hope that they may be too strong for the law," replied Mr. Culver. "If we can but get the law altered, our day of prosperity may come again. We might have learned by this time that all our hopes of selling our silks abroad are at an end, unless we improve like our neighbours, instead of wrapping ourselves up in the idea that nobody can ever equal us."
"Ay, I suppose it was under the notion that it was a fine thing to export, that we were forbidden to import silks," observed Cooper; "but if they had only let us have a little free conversation with the French about their manufacture, we might by this time have had something as good as they to sell abroad."
"Or if not silks, something instead, which would have been produced out of what we should have saved from our expensive manufacture. If I had but the capital which is wasted in following our inferior methods, what fine things I would do with it for my family, and, in some sort, for my country!"
"I cannot imagine," Cooper again observed, "how the French afford their goods at the price they do. Whether it is that they have food cheaper, and therefore wages are lower, or whether it is that they have better machinery, I should like to come to a fair trial with them. If we can get upon an equality with them, well and good; there will be buyers at hand for all that we can make. If we cannot compete with them, better know it at once, and turn to something else, than be supplanted by means of a contraband trade, while our masters' money is spent in guarding the coast to no purpose."
"Never tell me!" interposed old Short. "You grumblers always grudge every farthing that is not spent upon yourselves."
"O, yes," replied Cooper, smiling; "we grumblers grudge every half-crown that is laid out on French silks in our neighbourhood; and no wonder, friend."
"It is the Coast Guard I was thinking of," replied the old man. "There is Mrs. Nicholas's son just well settled in the Preventive Service; and now you are for doing away the whole thing. What is to become of the poor lad, I wonder?"
"Cooper will teach him to weave," said Mr. Culver, laughing. "So many more people would wear silks, if we had fair play, that we might make a weaver of a coast guardsman here and there."
Cooper feared it would be a somewhat difficult task to impart his skill to Nicholas, who was not over-bright in learning; but he would attempt more difficult things if they brought any chance of relief from the present unhappy state of affairs. He was as little given to despond as any man; and was more secure than many of his neighbours of being employed as long as there was occupation to be had; but it did make him tremble to look forward, when he reflected how his earnings grew less, quarter by quarter.