so many people want employ, and so much
wool unwrought up, and which for want of being thus wrought up, is carried
away by a clandestine, smuggling, pernicious trade, to employ our enemies
in trade, the French, and to endanger our manufactures at foreign markets,
how great is our negligence, and how much to the reproach of our country
is it, that we do not improve this trade, and increase the consumption of
the manufactures as we ought to do? I mean the consumption at home, for of
the foreign consumption I have spoken already.

It seems to follow here as a natural inquiry, after what has been said,
that we should ask, How is this to be done, and by what method can the
people of England increase the home consumption of their woollen
manufactures?

I cannot give a more direct answer to this question, or introduce what
follows in a better manner, than in the very words of the author of the
book so often mentioned above, as follows, speaking of this very thing,
thus:--

"The next branch of complaint," says this author, "is, that the
consumption of our woollen manufacture is lessened at home.

"This, indeed," continues he, "though least regarded, has the most truth
and reason in it, and merits to be more particularly inquired into; but
supposing the fact to be true, let me ask the complainer this question,
viz., why do we not mend it? and that without laws, without teazing the
parliament and our sovereign, for what they find difficult enough to
effect even by law? The remedy is our own, and in our own power. I say,
why do not the people of Great Britain, by general custom and by universal
consent, increase the consumption of their own manufacture by rejecting
the trifles and toys of foreigners?

"Why do we not appear dressed in the growth of our own country, and made
fine by the labour of our own hands?" Vide Plan of the English Commerce,
p. 252.

And again, p. 254; "We must turn the complaints of the people upon
themselves, and entreat them to encourage the manufactures of England by a
more general use and wearing of them. This alone would increase the
consumption, as that alone would increase the manufacture itself."

I cannot put this into a plainer or better way of arguing, or in words
more intelligible to every capacity.

Did ever any nation but ours complain of the declining of their trade and
at the same time discourage it among themselves? Complain that foreigners
prohibit our manufactures, and at the same