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wares, consisting principally in wool, woolfels, tin, lead, leather, and, if so, commerce must have increased considerably in the space of forty years. During this period the condition of France was most miserable. Her lands remained without cultivation, and her people was reduced to misery, yet she could then boast of the richest merchant in the world, Jacques Cœur, intendantgeneral of the French king's finances; so much did that nation always abound in contrasts. At the end of the sixteenth century, the customs of England were farmed for £14,000, but were raised by Queen Elizabeth to £40,000, and, afterwards, to £50,000 per annum. In the beginning of the same century France had a gleam of prosperity; for trade, navigation, and letters began to flourish under Francis I.; but, as Voltaire remarks, they were all buried in his grave. The same writer observes, that about the middle of that century, the French, though possessing ports both on the Ocean and the Mediterranean, had no navy; and though plunged in luxury had only a few coarse manufactures. The Jews, the Genoese, the Venetians, the Portugueze, the Flemish, the Dutch, and the English traded for us, as we were ignorant of the very first principles of commerce.' Yet, in the midst of this great superiority, it is curious to hear the complaints of Sir W. Raleigh, like a modern grumbler, lamenting over the misconduct and melancholy prospects of England; and, like modern grumblers too, finding a speedy refutation in facts; for, in 1613, the exports amounted to £2,487,435: 7s. 10d. and the imports to £2,141,151: 10s. In 1622 the same complaints were renewed, and the same answer was given, by an increase of circulation, if not of exports: for the sum total of export and import exceeded that of 1613 by £300,000. An edict of Lewis XIII. in 1626, prohibiting the exportation of wine, grain, pulse, to England; and the importation thence to France of cloths, serges, wool, lead, tin, stuffs, and even silk stockings, shows how little reasonable were those complaints when the state of Britain was compared to that of our rivals. In 1641 the customs of England were said to amount to £500,000 sterling; but what seems almost incredible is that, notwithstanding the civil wars, which must have caused a great interruption to industry, the Lords and Commons actually raised £40,000,000 sterling to oppose the King between the years 1641 and 1647; or more than £6,500,000 yearly for six successive years. We are told that about this time France began to undermine the trade of England; and Richelieu had raised the revenues of the crown from 35,000,000 to 70,000,000 livres, not quite £3,000,000 sterling. But, when we consider that Richelieu was the greatest minister that France has ever possessed, and that his æra was contempo

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rary with the most untoward circumstances of England; and when we compare the two amounts, together with the extent of territory and all other circumstances of both nations, we shall only be the more convinced of M. Dupin's error; since, at the conclusion of the most brilliant ministry of large luxurious France, this little England, then hardly one-fourth in size, could raise supplies so much beyond her proportion of territory and climate. Yet we venture to say that, if M. Dupin had been asked whether the administration of Richelieu had not raised his nation far above ours, he would not have hesitated to answer in the affirmative.

From the year 1601 to 1651 the interest of money had been, by law, lower in France than in England; having been there reduced to six and half a per cent. in 1601; and here from ten to eight in 1624, and to six in 1660. After the results just stated, it is impossible to suppose that the high rate of interest in England proceeded from an absolute dearth of money, but altogether from a relative scarcity. Money applied to commerce brought home larger returns than when squandered away in pleasure; and as long as active demands for capital exceeded the quantity, capital was worth a high price. This must occur in every rapid development of industry, and we have witnessed similar effects in our own times. But the tendency is to make capital ultimately plentiful, and consequently cheap. This effect most amply took place as trade brought home due profits to England; for from the time abovementioned interest has been pretty uniformly decreasing to its present rate; while in France it has really undergone no further diminution to this hour, and has often returned to its former high prices.

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The year 1660 was remarkable, not only for the reduction of interest, but for the establishment of the Royal Society, to which, says Voltaire, the world owes the recent discoveries upon light, the principles of gravitation, the motion of the fixed stars, transcendant geometry, with many other discoveries which in this respect entitles this age to be called the age of the English as much as of Lewis XIV.-We think much more so.

In 1664 our imports exceeded our exports, and this was the year in which the exertions of Colbert were the most strenuous. In 1667 the French had made great progress; but by pretending to a monopoly, and by excluding foreign goods, she compelled other nations to a retaliation. In 1669 the excess of our exports over our imports became £1,147,660: 10s. 9d.; and in 1703 it was £2,117,523: 3s. 104d. About this time, however, we took more wares from France than we sent thither; because her wines we could not produce, and we did not yet manufacture her luxuries; and because such comforts as we then possessed she had not yet learned

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learned to use: but our general commerce very much exceeded hers. In 1703, the year of the dreadful tempest, our exports were £6,644,203, one-third of which went to Holland alone. The French council of commerce were very active and prudent about this period, and did much to promote the interests of their country; but we challenge M. Dupin to prove that the average of French customs for the fifteen years ending 1714, amounted, as ours did, to £1,352,764. In 1717 and 1727 we began to feel the profits of our trade in the prosperity which permitted a reduction of interest to five and to four per cent.; while France was enhancing the nominal, and not the real value of her coins, and extricating herself by fraud and violence from the burden of debt, amounting to 1,977,000,000 of livres, bequeathed to her by the glories of Lewis XIV. In a French work by Monsieur Deslandes, in 1744, the expenditure of France is stated to exceed the revenue by £8,850,000; while the annual expense of England, £7,300,000, was constantly raised within the year. The consequence of this mode of proceeding was, that, five years afterwards, the interest upon the public debt was reduced to 3 per cent., notwithstanding the rebellion of 1745; and the nation was able to grant supplies in 1761 amounting to £18,816,019:19s. 9 d. The national debt, it is true, stood at £110,613,836, bearing an interest of £3,792,594; but the ways and means amounted to £18,617,895, exceeding the expenditure by more than £300,000.

To complete this sketch, which we think fully sufficient to convince most persons of the egregiousness of the error into which M. Dupin's enthusiasm has led him, we here subjoin a table of British exports and imports from the year 1700 to 1770, closing it nearly at the epocha alluded to by that writer. We have given it at periods of five years, which are close enough for our purpose, and will not, we trust, be burdensome to the reader.

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The fluctuations observable in these tables are owing to peace, war, and the various accidents of the times. But the total circulation of trade in 1700 was about £12,000,000 value. In 1770 it was £28,500,000; hence then it had more than doubled during that time; and the ways and means had increased in a still greater ratio. Now if M. Dupin has any hidden records of the prosperity of his country, any secret memoirs of her trade and manufactures, not yet done into history, we shall receive them with pleasure: but, should he not, he must allow us still to believe implicitly in what we do know, and to set his assertions down among the least founded ejaculations of vain patriotism.

We know not to what other subject we can now turn in order to give this writer a further chance of being in the right. Is it to agriculture? Let him prove that the territory of France nourished a population in the same proportion to its extent, and soil, and climate, as that of England; that that population was as well fed, as well clothed, and in as full enjoyment of all the blessings resulting from the enlightened theories and practices of tillage; that the peasantry was, in all respects, except levity, as happy as ours; we think we can follow him step by step through every æra of our history, and prove the reverse. Let him choose what branch he pleases of national prosperity, we defy him to demonstrate that, that at any epocha during the last seven hundred years at least, the balance of intellect, in all its provinces, was not entirely on our side. We leave him here fourteen times as much ground as he chose for himself, and we do not think his task one bit easier than before.

It was in speaking of inland navigation that M. Dupin was led to the rapturous exclamations upon which we have been descanting. No doubt then his opinion is less far from being accurate on this head, than on any of the others on which he has touched. We will therefore try his last question, not so much in the intention of disputing the superiority of France therein, before the year 1770, as of begging him to inform us how great that superiority

then was.

The system of canals is, at this moment, more extensive in England than in any country of Europe, where artificial cuts are not indispensable for the dryness of the soil, or where water is not so abundant as to be a nuisance. It is easy to understand how, in the Netherlands, the necessity of draining and embanking suggested the idea of canals, long before civilization, or the demands of industry in other respects, required their assistance. But, in countries like England or France, their origin was different, and there they arose principally out of the progress of public wants. In this country that certainly is true, as their uses and

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advantages

advantages fully prove. How far the industry of France may have demanded such works, as the canal of Briare, in the reigu of Henry IV., and how far all the subsequent undertakings of the same nature there were in proportion to the then existing traffic of the country, we will not decide. But upon the whole, we think that the quantity of carriage upon those canals, ever since their establishment, demonstrates that they never were so indispensable to the commerce of France, as the canals of England have been to the commerce of this island.

We do not dispute that our prodigious superiority in inland navigation commenced at a period very little prior to the time when M. Dupin asserts his country's empty claims. In 1755, we had no canals. Not that some attempts at inland navigation had not been made before that period, by rendering some of our rivers navigable; but nothing comparable to our present system had been executed. But is it because some canals which, even now, are far from bringing in the same returns of profit as ours, were cut in France before the year 1755, that M. Dupin can call our canals, or any thing that we have, a plagiary from his ancestors? We admit all that he can advance as to the greatness of the enterprize of joining the Loire and the Seine, the Somme and the Oise, the Ocean and the Mediterranean, and the stupendousness of the locks, sluices, tunnels, &c. as well as of the whole construction. But we would ask, how many leagues of French canals must a traveller even now navigate, before he can meet the same weight of merchandize that was carried, in a given time, upon a given length of any canal existing in England in 1770? And can he say, that it is to the precepts or the example of his country, that we owe our so much more useful and stupendous works? And whence did the French, did Henry IV. and François Riquet draw their notions of inland navigation? Can he seriously assert that they were original? Has he forgotten the ancients? The fossiones Philistine'? The artificial rivers of the Babylonians? The cut which joined both branches of the Euphrates? the Naarmalcha? many works of the Romans, among which one in Britain, now called Caeirdike, might alone have served as a model? Has he not heard of the Egyptians, the Chinese, the Dutch, and the Flemish, all prior to the French? and could his national complacency not allow that both French and English drew their notions from the same preceding nations? the one to construct a great, the other a great and a useful work? Possibly he may take a fancy to extend the charge to other matters; and we shall not be surprized to hear him say that the English owe to the French the application of atmospheric air to the processes of respiration. The spirit yet lives that made M.

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