Some Considerations of the Lowering of Interest [7]
own Country at Four per Cent. than abroad in a decaying. Country? Nor can their over-plus of Money bring them to Lend to you, on your Terms: For when your Merchants want of Money shall have sunk the price of your Market, a Dutchman will find it more gains to buy your Commodity himself, than Lend his Money at Four per Cent. to an English Merchant to Trade with. Nor will the Act of Navigation hinder their coming, by making them come empty, since even already there are those who think, that many, who go for English Merchants, are but Dutch Factors, and Trade for others in their own Names. The Kingdom therefore will lose by this lowering of Interest, if it makes Foreigners withdraw any of their Money, as well as if it hinders any of your People from Lending theirs, where Trade has need of it. In a Treatise writ on purpose for the bringing down of Interest, I find this Argument of Foreigners calling away their Money to the prejudice of our Trade, thus Answer'd, That the Money of Foreigners is not brought into the Land by ready Coin or Bullion, but by Goods or Bills of Exchange; and when it is paid must be returned by Goods or Bills of Exchange; and there will not be the less Money in the Land. I could not but wonder to see a Man, who undertook to write of Money and Interest, talk so directly besides the matter in the business of Trade. Foreigners Money, he says, is not brought into the Land by ready Coin or Bullion, but by Goods, or Bills of Exchange. How then do we come by Bullion or Money? For Gold grows not, that I know, in our Country, and Silver so little, that One hundred thousandth part of the Silver we have now in England, was not drawn out of any Mines in this Island. If he means that the Monied Man in Holland, who puts out his Money at Interest here, did not send it over in Bullion or Specie hither: That may be true or false; but either way helps not that Authors purpose. For if he paid his Money to a Merchant his Neighbour, and took his Bills for it here in England, he did the same thing as if he had sent over that Money, since he does but make that Merchant leave in England the Money which he has Due to him there, and otherwise would carry away. No, says our Author, he cannot carry it away,for, says he, when it is paid it must be returned by Goods, Or Bills of Exchange. It must not be paid and exported in ready Money, so says our Law indeed, but that is a Law to hedge in the Cookoe, and serves to no purpose. For if we Export not Goods, for which our Merchants have Money due to them in Holland, How can it be paid by Bills of Exchange? And for Goods, One hundred pounds worth of Goods can no where pay Two hundred pounds in Money. This being that which I find many Men deceive themselves with in Trade, it may be worth while to make it a little plainer. Let us suppose England Peopled as it is now. and its Woollen Manufacture in the same State and Perfection, that it is at present; and that we, having no Money at all, trade with this our Woollen Manufacture for the value of Two hundred thousand pounds Yearly to Spain, where there actually is a Million in Money: Further let us suppose that we bring back from Spain Yearly in Oyl, Wine, and Fruit, to the value of One hundred thousand pounds, and continue to do this Ten Years together: 'Tis plain we have had for our two Millions value in Woollen Manufacture carried thither, one Million returned in Wine, Oyl, and Fruit: But what is become of t'other Million? Will the Merchants be content to lose it? That you may be sure they would not, nor have Traded on, if they had not every Year Returns made answering their Exportation. How then were the [ Returns made? In Money it is evident. For the Spaniards having in such a Trade, no Debts, nor the possibility of any Debts in England, cannot pay one Farthing of that other Million by Bills of Exchange: And having no Commodities that we will take off above the value of One hundred thousand pounds Per Annum, they cannot pay us in Commodities. From whence it necessarily follows, that the Hundred thousand pounds per Ann. wherein we