solutely
prohibiting their tenants from ploughing; not satisfied to confine them
within certain limitations, as it is the practice of the English; one
effect of which is already seen in the prodigious dearness of corn, and
the importation of it from London, as the cheaper market:[6] And because
people are the riches of a country, and that our neighbours have done,
and are doing all that in them lie, to make our wool a drug to us, and a
monopoly to them; therefore the politic gentlemen of Ireland have
depopulated vast tracts of the best land, for the feeding of sheep.[7]

I could fill a volume as large as the history of the Wise Men of Gotham
with a catalogue only of some wonderful laws and customs we have
observed within thirty years past.[8] 'Tis true indeed, our beneficial
traffic of wool with France, hath been our only support for several
years past, furnishing us all the little money we have to pay our rents
and go to market. But our merchants assure me, "This trade hath received
a great damp by the present fluctuating condition of the coin in France;
and that most of their wine is paid for in specie, without carrying
thither any commodity from hence."

However, since we are so universally bent upon enlarging our flocks, it
may be worth enquiring what we shall do with our wool, in case
Barnstaple[9] should be overstocked, and our French commerce should
fail?

I could wish the Parliament had thought fit to have suspended their
regulation of church matters, and enlargements of the prerogative till a
more convenient time, because they did not appear very pressing (at
least to the persons principally concerned) and instead of these great
refinements in politics and divinity, had amused themselves and their
committees a little with the state of the nation. For example: What if
the House of Commons had thought fit to make a resolution _nemine
contradicente_ against wearing any cloth or stuff in their families,
which were not of the growth and manufacture of this kingdom? What if
they had extended it so far as utterly to exclude all silks, velvets,
calicoes, and the whole lexicon of female fopperies; and declared, that
whoever acted otherwise, should be deemed and reputed an enemy to the
nation?[10] What if they had sent up such a resolution to be agreed to
by the House of Lords, and by their own practice and encouragement
spread the execution of it in their several countries? What if we should
agree to make burying in