sell their wool at home, we should soon find a
difference in the expense of wool, by the French being disabled from
imitating our manufactures abroad, and the consumption of our own would
naturally increase in proportion. First, they would not be able to thrust
their manufactures into foreign markets as they now do, by which the sale
of our manufactures must necessarily be abated; and, secondly, they would
want supplies at home, and consequently our manufactures would be more
called for, even in France itself, and that in spite of penalties and
prohibitions.

Thus by our taking off the Irish wool, we should in time prevent its
exportation to France; and by preventing its going to France, we should
disable the French, and increase the consumption of our own manufactures
in all the ports whither they now send them, and even in France itself.

I have met with some people who have made calculations of the quantity of
wool which is sent annually from Ireland to France, and they have done it
by calculating, first how many packs of wool the whole kingdom of Ireland
may produce; and this they do again from the number of sheep which they
say are fed in Ireland in the whole. How right this calculation may be I
will not determine.

First, they tell us, there are fed in Ireland thirty millions of sheep,
and as all these sheep are supposed be sheared once every year, they must
produce exactly thirty millions of fleeces, allowing the fell wool in
proportion to the number of sheep killed.

It is observable, by a very critical account of the wool produced annually
in Romney marsh, in the county of Kent, and published in the said Plan of
the English Commerce, that the fleeces of wool of those large sheep,
generally weigh above four pounds and a half each. It is computed thus;
first he tells us that Romney marsh contains 47,110 acres of land, that
they feed 141,330 sheep, whose wool being shorn, makes up 2,523 packs of
wool, the sum of which is, that every acre feeds three sheep, every sheep
yields one fleece, and 56 fleeces make one pack of wool, all which comes
out to 2,523 packs of wool, twenty-three fleeces over, every pack weighing
two hundred and forty pounds of wool. Vide Plan, &c. p. 259.

I need not observe here, that the sheep in Ireland are not near so large
as the sheep in Romney marsh, these last being generally the largest breed
of sheep in England, except a few on the bank of the river Tees in the
bishoprick of Durham.