The Maintenance of Free Trade [18]
are in Bondage, and have lost the benefit of the Two essential Parts of Trafficke, namely the Rule of money and exchanges? Let every man judge. Today nothing of the dependances of Trade, as the increase of Navigation and Navigators, when Merchants heretofore had more freedome, and the Ports were furnished and frequented, with great store of shipping; which although they were but small of burden: yet every one had their severall Pilot and Mariners, which did daily supplie the Land, with plenty of Sea-men. The Merchants Staplers have observed, that the Merchants Adventurers, have an inevitable opportunity of Combination, to set what price they please upon cloth to the Clothier, of Wooll to the Grower, and of all Commodities exported and imported; and likewise to lay what private impositions they please, upon any of the said Commodities, so that whether they doe well or ill for the Common-weale, there can be no apparant triall: for having power to barre all others from Trade, but themselves, they are like a Commoditie weighed in a Ballance, that hath but one end, where there can be no Counterpoize, and then it seemes to bee great weight, although it be never so light. So that this ingrossing of Trade into few mens hands, hath caused our home Trades to decay, our Manufactures to decrease, and our home-bred Commodities to lie upon our hands unsold, or to be sold at a low price, to the utter undoing of all sorts of poore people in England, and the great damage of all his Majesties loving Subjects; and whilest our merchants hinder one another from Trade, other Nations increase their own Manufactures, and enlarge their Trade; not only for the said Countries of high and low Germany, but also for Russia, Eastland, Poland and other places. For the making of good and true Cloth, many excellent Lawes have beene made and enacted, especially in the fourth yeere of his Majesties happy Raigne; whereupon I have heretofore made a Demonstration which was exhibited to the Right Honourable the Lords of the Privie Councell, shewing the weight, length and breadth of all sorts of Clothes, and that Weight and Measure doth controlle each other, whereby the Merchant that buyeth the Cloth, may be enabled to finde out the fraud and deceit of the Clothier: but this should bee done before the selling of them, and that by honest Officers or Magistrates, according to the said Acte, whereof our great Booke (now under the Presse,) intituled Lex Mercatoria or the Law Merchant, doth intreat of more particularly. The eight cause of the decay of Trade, is Th'exportation of the materials of Wools, and Wooll-fells, from the Sea-coasts of England, and the Kingdome of Scotland, and the Customes and Impositions laid upon Clothes at home and abroad in other Countries, especially the great Imposition in the Low united Provinces called Consumption Money, payed by the Retaile of Cloth or Drapery, only upon our English Clothes, and not upon Cloth in those parts, whereby their Cloth is more vented, and English Cloth in less Request. Touching the exportation of Materials, there is a provident order taken, to prevent the same in England, by a late direction and Proclamation, prohibiting the exportation of Woolls, Wooll fells, Wool-yearne, Fullers earth, and Wood ashes. And the like will be done in Scotland; and for the better execution, there is a Committee appointed of certaine selected discreet persons under the great Seale of England. The ninth Cause of the decay of Trade, are the Warres in Christendome, as also in other Countries out of the same, where our Cloth and Manufactures have been transported, increased by the daily losses sustained by Pirats, and continuall breaking of Merchants and Tradesmen; all which is meerely Heterocliton or opposite to Traffique, and they concurre all in nature, to the interruption and overthrowing of Trade; and this can never be divereted, prevented, nor remedied, by selling our Clothes or Manufactures cheape, to undersell other Nations, who meet with the said hinderances and interruption as well as we doe,