d best
goods; and such is the necessity of their affairs, that they to this day
run them in, that is, import them clandestinely at the greatest risk, in
spite of the strictest prohibition, and of the severest penalties, death
and the galleys excepted; a certain token that their imitation of our
manufactures is so far from pleasing and supplying other parts of the
world, that they are not sufficient to supply, or good enough to please
themselves.

I must confess the imitating our manufactures has been carried further in
France than in any other part of the world, and yet we do not see they
have been able so to affect the consumption as to have any visible
influence upon our trade; or, that we abate the quantity which we usually
made, but that if they have checked the export at all, we have still found
other channels of trade which have fully carried off our quantity, and
shall still do so, though other nations were able to imitate us to, and
this is very particularly stated and explained by the author of the book
above mentioned, called the Plan of the English Commerce, where the
extending our manufactures is handled more at large than I have room for
in the narrow compass of this tract, and therefore I again refer my reader
thither, as to the fountain head.

But I go on to touch the heads of things. The French do imitate our
manufactures in a better manner, and in greater quantity than other
nations; and why do we not prevent them? It is a terrible satire upon our
vigilance, or upon the method of our custom-house men, that we do not
prevent it; seeing the French themselves will not stick to acknowledge,
that without a supply of our wool, which is evident they have now with
very small difficulty from Ireland, they could do little in it, and indeed
nothing at all to the purpose.

On the other hand, it is not so with France in regard to their silk
manufactures, in which although we have not the principles of the work, I
mean the silk growing within our dominions, but are obliged to bring it
from Italy, yet we have so effectually shut out the French silk
manufactures from our market, that in a word we have no occasion at all
for them; nay, if you will believe some of our manufacturers, the French
buy some of our wrought silks and carry them into France; but whether the
particular be so in fact or no, this I can take upon me from good evidence
to affirm, that whereas we usually imported in the ordinary course of
trade, at