The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) by Daniel Defoe

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It is poverty fills armies, mans navies, and peoples colonies. In vain
the drums beat for soldiers, and the king's captains invite seamen to
serve in the armies for fivepence a-day, and in the royal navy for
twenty-three shillings per month, in a country where the ordinary
labourer can have nine shillings a-week for his labour, and the
manufacturers earn from twelve to sixteen shillings a-week for their
work, and while trade gives thirty shillings per month wages to the
seamen on board merchant ships. Men will always stay or go, as the pay
gives them encouragement; and this is the reason why it has been so much
more difficult to raise and recruit armies in England, than it has been
in Scotland and Ireland, France and Germany.

The same trade that keeps our people at home, is the cause of the well
living of the people here; for as frugality is not the national virtue
of England, so the people that get much spend much; and as they work
hard, so they live well, eat and drink well, clothe warm, and lodge
soft--in a word, the working manufacturing people of England eat the
fat, and drink the sweet, live better, and fare better, than the working
poor of any other nation in Europe; they make better wages of their
work, and spend more of the money upon their backs and bellies, than in
any other country. This expense of the poor, as it causes a prodigious
consumption both of the provisions, and of the manufactures of our
country at home, so two things are undeniably the consequence of that
part.

1. The consumption of provisions increases the rent and value of the
lands, and this raises the gentlemen's estates, and that again increases
the employment of people, and consequently the numbers of them, as well
those who are employed in the husbandry of land, breeding and feeding of
cattle, &c, as of servants in the gentlemen's families, who, as their
estates increase in value, so they increase their families and
equipages.

2. As the people get greater wages, so they, I mean the same poorer part
of the people, clothe better, and furnish better, and this increases the
consumption of the very manufactures they make; then that consumption
increases the quantity made, and this creates what we call inland trade,
by which innumerable families are employed, and the increase of the
people maintained, and by which increase of trade and people the present
growing prosperity of this nation is produced.

The whole glory and greatness of England, then, being thus raised by
trade, it must be unaccountable folly and ignorance in us to lessen that
one article in our own esteem, which is the only fountain from whence we
all, take us as a nation, are raised, and by which we are enriched and
maintained. The Scripture says, speaking of the riches and glory of the
city of Tyre--which was, indeed, at that time, the great port or
emporium of the world for foreign commerce, from whence all the silks
and fine manufactures of Persia and India were exported all over the
western world--'That her merchants were princes;' and, in another place,
'By thy traffic thou hast increased thy riches.' (Ezek. xxviii. 5.)
Certain it is, that our traffic has increased our riches; and it is also
certain, that the flourishing of our manufactures is the foundation of
all our traffic, as well our merchandise as our inland trade.

The inland trade of England is a thing not easily described; it would,
in a word, take up a whole book by itself; it is the foundation of all
our wealth and greatness; it is the support of all our foreign trade,
and of our manufacturing, and, as I have hitherto written, of the
tradesmen who carry it on. I shall proceed with a brief discourse of the
trade itself.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] [We have here a pleasing trait of the superior sagacity of Defoe,
in as far as it was a prevalent notion down to his time, and even later
(nor is it, perhaps, altogether extinguished yet), that the prosperity
of a country was marked by its excess of exports over imports. Defoe
justly ranks the amount of importation on a level with that of
exportation, as indicative of the well-being of the country.]

CHAPTER XXIII

OF THE INLAND TRADE OF ENGLAND, ITS MAGNITUDE, AND THE GREAT ADVANTAGE
IT IS TO THE NATION IN GENERAL

I have, in a few words, described what I mean by the inland trade of
England, in the introduction to this work. It is the circulation of
commerce among ourselves.

I. For the carrying on our manufactures of several kinds in the several
counties where they are made, and the employing the several sorts of
people and trades needful for the said manufactures.

II. For the raising and vending provisions of all kinds for the supply
of the vast numbers of people who are employed every where by the said
manufactures.

III. For the importing and bringing in from abroad all kinds of foreign
growth and manufactures which we want.

IV. For the carrying about and dispersing, as well our own growth and
manufactures as the foreign imported growth and manufactures of other
nations, to the retailer, and by them to the last consumer, which is the
utmost end of all trade; and this, in every part, to the utmost corner
of the island of Great Britain and Ireland.

This I call inland trade, and these circulators of goods, and retailers
of them to the last consumer, are those whom we are to understand by the
word tradesmen, in all the parts of this work; for (as I observed in the
beginning) the ploughmen and farmers who labour at home, and the
merchant who imports our merchandise from abroad, are not at all meant
or included, and whatever I have been saying, except where they have
been mentioned in particular, and at length.

This inland trade is in itself at this time the wonder of all the world
of trade, nor is there any thing like it now in the world, much less
that exceeds it, or perhaps ever will be, except only what itself may
grow up to in the ages to come; for, as I have said on all occasions, it
is still growing and increasing.

By this prodigy of a trade, all the vast importation from our own
colonies is circulated and dispersed to the remotest corner of the
island, whereby the consumption is become so great, and by which those
colonies are so increased, and are become so populous and so wealthy as
I have already observed of them. This importation consists chiefly of
sugars and tobacco, of which the consumption in Great Britain is
scarcely to be conceived of, besides the consumption of cotton, indigo,
rice, ginger, pimento or Jamaica pepper, cocoa or chocolate, rum and
molasses, train-oil, salt-fish, whale-fin, all sorts of furs, abundance
of valuable drugs, pitch, tar, turpentine, deals, masts, and timber, and
many other things of smaller value; all which, besides the employing a
very great number of ships and English seamen, occasion again a very
great exportation of our own manufactures of all sorts to those
colonies; which being circulated again for consumption there, that
circulation is to be accounted a branch of home or inland trade, as
those colonies are on all such occasions esteemed as a branch of part of
ourselves, and of the British government in the world.

This trade to our West Indies and American colonies, is very
considerable, as it employs so many ships and sailors, and so much of
the growth of those colonies is again exported by us to other parts of
the world, over and above what is consumed among us at home; and, also,
as all those goods, and a great deal of money in specie, is returned
hither for and in balance of our own manufactures and merchandises
exported thither--on these accounts some have insisted that more real
wealth is brought into Great Britain every year from those colonies,
than is brought from the Spanish West Indies to old Spain,
notwithstanding the extent of their dominion is above twenty times as
much, and notwithstanding the vast quantity of gold and silver which
they bring from the mines of Mexico, and the mountains of Potosi.[38]

Whether these people say true or no, is not my business to inquire here;
though, if I may give my opinion, I must acknowledge that I believe they
do; but be it so or not, it is certain that it is an infinitely extended
trade, and daily increasing; and much of it, if not all, is and ought to
be esteemed as an inland trade, because, as above, it is a circulation
among ourselves.

As the manufactures of England, particularly those of wool (cotton wool
included), and of silk, are the greatest, and amount to the greatest
value of any single manufacture in Europe,[39] so they not only employ
more people, but those people gain the most money, that is to say, have
the best wages for their work of any people in the world; and yet, which
is peculiar to England, the English manufactures are, allowing for their
goodness, the cheapest at market of any in the world, too. Even France
itself, after all the pains they are at to get our wool, and all the
expense they have been at to imitate our manufactures, by getting over
our workmen, and giving them even greater wages than they had here, have
yet made so little proficiency in it, and are so far from outselling us
in foreign markets, that they still, in spite of the strictest
prohibitions, send hither, and to Holland and Germany, for English
broad-cloths, druggets, duroys, flannels, serges, and several other
sorts of our goods, to supply their own. Nor can they clothe themselves
to their satisfaction with their own goods; but if any French gentleman
of quality comes over hither from France, he is sure to bring no more
coats with him than backs, but immediately to make him new clothes as
soon as he arrives, and to carry as many new suits home with him at his
return, as he can get leave to bring ashore when he comes there--a
demonstration that our manufacture exceeds theirs, after all their
boasts of it, both in goodness and in cheapness, even by their own
confession. But I am not now to enter upon the particular manufactures,
but the general trade in the manufacture; this particular being a trade
of such a magnitude, it is to be observed for our purpose, that the
greatness of it consists of two parts:--

1. The consumption of it at home, including our own plantations and
factories.

2. The exportation of it to foreign parts, exclusive of the said
plantations and factories.

It is the first of these which is the subject of my present discourse,
because the tradesmen to whom, and for whose instruction these chapters
are designed, are the people principally concerned in the making all
these manufactures, and wholly and solely concerned in dispersing and
circulating them for the home consumption; and this, with some
additions, as explained above, I call _inland trade_.

The home-consumption of our own goods, as it is very great, so it has
one particular circumstance attending it, which exceedingly increases it
as a trade, and that is, that besides the numbers of people which it
employs in the raising the materials, and making the goods themselves as
a manufacture--I say, besides all this, there are multitudes of people
employed, cattle maintained, with waggons and carts for the service on
shore, barges and boats for carriage in the rivers, and ships and barks
for carrying by sea, and all for the circulating these manufactures from
one place to another, for the consumption of them among the people.

So that, in short, the circulation of the goods is a business not equal,
indeed, but bearing a very great proportion to the trade itself.

This is owing to another particular circumstance of our manufacture, and
perhaps is not so remarkably the case of any other manufacture or
country in Europe, namely, that though all our manufactures are used
and called for by almost all the people, and that in every part of the
whole British dominion, yet they are made and wrought in their several
distinct and respective countries in Britain, and some of them at the
remotest distance from one another, hardly any two manufactures being
made in one place. For example:

The broad-cloth and druggets in Wilts, Gloucester, and Worcestershire;
serges in Devon and Somersetshire; narrow-cloths in Yorkshire and
Staffordshire; kerseys, cottons, half-thicks, duffields, plains, and
coarser things, in Lancashire and Westmoreland; shalloons in the
counties of Northampton, Berks, Oxford, Southampton, and York;
women's-stuffs in Norfolk; linsey-woolseys, &c, at Kidderminster;
dimmeties and cotton-wares at Manchester; flannels at Salisbury, and in
Wales; tammeys at Coventry; and the like. It is the same, in some
respects, with our provisions, especially for the supply of the city of
London, and also of several other parts: for example, when I speak of
provisions, I mean such as are not made use of in the county where they
are made and produced. For example:

Butter, in firkins, in Suffolk and Yorkshire; cheese from Cheshire,
Wiltshire, Warwickshire, and Gloucestershire; herrings, cured red, from
Yarmouth in Norfolk; coals, for fuel, from Northumberland and Durham;
malt from the counties of Hertford, Essex, Kent, Bucks, Oxford, Berks,
&c.

And thus of many other things which are the proper produce of one part
of the country only, but are from thence dispersed for the ordinary use
of the people into many, or perhaps into all the other counties of
England, to the infinite advantage of our inland commerce, and employing
a vast number of people and cattle; and consequently those people and
cattle increasing the consumption of provisions and forage, and the
improvement of lands; so true it is, and so visible, that trade
increases people, and people increase trade.

This carriage of goods in England from those places is chiefly managed
by horses and waggons; the number of which is not to be guessed at, nor
is there any rule or art that can be thought of, by which any just
calculation can be made of it, and therefore I shall not enter upon any
particular of it at this time; it is sufficient to say, what I believe
to be true, namely, that it is equal to the whole trade of some nations,
and the rather because of the great improvement of land, which proceeds
from the employing so many thousands of horses as are furnished for this
part of business.

In other countries, and indeed, in most countries in Europe, all their
inland trade, such as it is, is carried on by the convenience of
navigation, either by coastings on the sea, or by river-navigation. It
is true, our coasting trade is exceedingly great, and employs a
prodigious number of ships, as well from all the shores of England to
London, as from one port to another.

But as to our river-navigation, it is not equal to it, though in some
places it is very great too; but we have but a very few navigable rivers
in England, compared with those of other countries; nor are many of
those rivers we have navigable to any considerable length from the sea.
The most considerable rivers in England for navigation are as
follows:--The Thames, the Trent, the Severn, the Wye, the Ouse, the
Humber, the Air, and the Calder. These are navigable a considerable way,
and receive several other navigable rivers into them; but except these
there are very few rivers in England which are navigable much above the
first town of note within their mouth.

Most of our other greatest and most navigable rivers are navigable but a
very little way in; as the northern Ouse but to York, the Orwell but to
Ipswich, the Yare but to Norwich; the Tyne itself but a very little
above Newcastle, not in all above twelve miles; the Tweed not at all
above Berwick; the great Avon but to Bristol; the Exe but to Exeter; and
the Dee but to Chester: in a word, our river-navigation is not to be
named for carriage, with the vast bulk of carriage by pack-horses and by
waggons; nor must the carriage by pedlars on their backs be omitted.[40]

This carriage is the medium of our inland trade, and, as I said, is a
branch of the trade itself. This great carriage is occasioned by the
situation of our produce and manufactures. For example--the Taunton and
Exeter serges, perpetuanas, and duroys, come chiefly by land; the
clothing, such as the broad-cloth and druggets from Wilts, Gloucester,
Worcester, and Shropshire, comes all by land-carriage to London, and
goes down again by land-carriages to all parts of England; the Yorkshire
clothing trade, the Manchester and Coventry trades, all by land, not to
London only, but to all parts of England, by horse-packs--the Manchester
men being, saving their wealth, a kind of pedlars, who carry their goods
themselves to the country shopkeepers every where, as do now the
Yorkshire and Coventry manufacturers also.

Now, in all these manufactures, however remote from one another, every
town in England uses something, not only of one or other, but of all the
rest. Every sort of goods is wanted every where; and where they make one
sort of goods, and sell them all over England, they at the same time
want other goods from almost every other part. For example:

Norwich makes chiefly woollen stuffs and camblets, and these are sold
all over England; but then Norwich buys broad-cloth from Wilts and
Worcestershire, serges and sagathies from Devon and Somersetshire,
narrow cloth from Yorkshire, flannel from Wales, coal from Newcastle,
and the like; and so it is, _mutatis mutandis_, of most of the other
parts.

The circulating of these goods in this manner, is the life of our inland
trade, and increases the numbers of our people, by keeping them employed
at home; and, indeed, of late they are prodigiously multiplied; and they
again increase our trade, as shall be mentioned in its place.

As the demand for all sorts of English goods is thus great, and they are
thus extended in every part of the island, so the tradesmen are
dispersed and spread over every part also; that is to say, in every
town, great or little, we find shopkeepers, wholesale or retail, who are
concerned in this circulation, and hand forward the goods to the last
consumer. From London, the goods go chiefly to the great towns, and from
those again to the smaller markets, and from those to the meanest
villages; so that all the manufactures of England, and most of them also
of foreign countries, are to be found in the meanest village, and in the
remotest corner of the whole island of Britain, and are to be bought, as
it were, at every body's door.

This shows not the extent of our manufactures only, but the usefulness
of them, and how they are so necessary to mankind that our own people
cannot be without them, and every sort of them, and cannot make one
thing serve for another; but as they sell their own, so they buy from
others, and every body here trades with every body: this it is that
gives the whole manufacture so universal a circulation, and makes it so
immensely great in England. What it is abroad, is not so much to our
present purpose.

Again, the magnitude of the city of London adds very considerably to the
greatness of the inland trade; for as this city is the centre of our
trade, so all the manufactures are brought hither, and from hence
circulated again to all the country, as they are particularly called
for. But that is not all; the magnitude of the city influences the whole
nation also in the article of provisions, and something is raised in
every county in England, however remote, for the supply of London; nay,
all the best of every produce is brought hither; so that all the people,
and all the lands in England, seem to be at work for, or employed by, or
on the account of, this overgrown city.

This makes the trade increase prodigiously, even as the city itself
increases; and we all know the city is very greatly increased within few
years past. Again, as the whole nation is employed to feed and clothe
this city, so here is the money, by which all the people in the whole
nation seem to be supported and maintained.

I have endeavoured to make some calculation of the number of shopkeepers
in this kingdom, but I find it is not to be done--we may as well count
the stars; not that they are equal in number neither, but it is as
impossible, unless any one person corresponded so as to have them
numbered in every town or parish throughout the kingdom. I doubt not
they are some hundreds of thousands, but there is no making an
estimate--the number is in a manner infinite. It is as impossible
likewise to make any guess at the bulk of their trade, and how much they
return yearly; nor, if we could, would it give any foundation for any
just calculation of the value of goods in general, because all our goods
circulate so much, and go so often through so many hands before they
come to the consumer. This so often passing every sort of goods through
so many hands, before it comes into the hands of the last consumer, is
that which makes our trade be so immensely great. For example, if there
is made in England for our home-consumption the value of L100,000 worth
of any particular goods, say, for example, that it be so many pieces of
serge or cloth, and if this goes through ten tradesmen's hands, before
it comes to the last consumer, then there is L1,000,000 returned in
trade for that L100,000 worth of goods; and so of all the sorts of goods
we trade in.

Again, as I said above, all our manufactures are so useful to, and
depend on, one another so much in trade, that the sale of one
necessarily causes the demand of the other in all parts. For example,
suppose the poorest countryman wants to be clothed, or suppose it be a
gentleman wants to clothe one of his servants, whether a footman in a
livery, or suppose it be any servant in ordinary apparel, yet he shall
in some part employ almost every one of the manufacturing counties of
England, for making up one ordinary suit of clothes. For example:

If his coat be of woollen-cloth, he has that from Yorkshire; the lining
is shalloon from Berkshire; the waistcoat is of callamanco from Norwich;
the breeches of a strong drugget from Devizes, Wiltshire; the stockings
being of yarn from Westmoreland; the hat is a felt from Leicester; the
gloves of leather from Somersetshire; the shoes from Northampton; the
buttons from Macclesfield in Cheshire, or, if they are of metal, they
come from Birmingham, or Warwickshire; his garters from Manchester; his
shirt of home-made linen of Lancashire, or Scotland.

If it be thus of every poor man's clothing, or of a servant, what must
it be of the master, and of the rest of the family? And in this
particular the case is the same, let the family live where they will; so
that all these manufactures must be found in all the remotest towns and
counties in England, be it where you will.

Again, take the furnishing of our houses, it is the same in proportion,
and according to the figure and quality of the person. Suppose, then, it
be a middling tradesman that is going to live in some market-town, and
to open his shop there; suppose him not to deal in the manufacture, but
in groceries, and such sort of wares as the country grocers sell.

This man, however, must clothe himself and his wife, and must furnish
his house: let us see, then, to how many counties and towns, among our
manufactures, must he send for his needful supply. Nor is the quantity
concerned in it; let him furnish himself as frugally as he pleases, yet
he must have something of every necessary thing; and we will suppose for
the present purpose the man lived in Sussex, where very few, if any,
manufactures are carried on; suppose he lived at Horsham, which is a
market-town in or near the middle of the county.

For his clothing of himself--for we must allow him to have a new suit of
clothes when he begins the world--take them to be just as above; for as
to the quality or quantity, it is much the same; only, that instead of
buying the cloth from Yorkshire, perhaps he has it a little finer than
the poor man above, and so his comes out of Wiltshire, and his stockings
are, it may be, of worsted, not of yarn, and so they come from
Nottingham, not Westmoreland; but this does not at all alter the case.

Come we next to his wife; and she being a good honest townsman's
daughter, is not dressed over fine, yet she must have something decent,
being newly married too, especially as times go, when the burghers'
wives of Horsham, or any other town, go as fine as they do in other
places: allow her, then, to have a silk gown, with all the necessaries
belonging to a middling tolerable appearance, yet you shall find all the
nation more or less concerned in clothing this country grocer's wife,
and furnishing his house, and yet nothing at all extravagant. For
example:

Her gown, a plain English mantua-silk, manufactured in Spitalfields; her
petticoat the same; her binding, a piece of chequered-stuff, made at
Bristol and Norwich; her under-petticoat, a piece of black callamanco,
made at Norwith--quilted at home, if she be a good housewife, but the
quilting of cotton from Manchester, or cotton-wool from abroad; her
inner-petticoats, flannel and swanskin, from Salisbury and Wales; her
stockings from Tewksbury, if ordinary, from Leicester, if woven; her
lace and edgings from Stony Stratford the first, and Great Marlow the
last; her muslin from foreign trade, as likewise her linen, being
something finer than the man's, may perhaps be a guilick-Holland; her
wrapper, or morning-gown, a piece of Irish linen, printed at London; her
black hood, a thin English lustring; her gloves, lamb's-skin, from
Berwick and Northumberland, or Scotland; her ribands, being but very
few, from Coventry, or London; her riding-hood, of English
worsted-camblet, made at Norwich.

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