me indolence and neglect, that they have not
there growing at this time, the coffee of Mocha, as the Dutch have at
Batavia; the tea of China, the cocoa of the Caraccas, the spices of the
Moluccas, and all the other productions of the remotest Indies, which grow
now in the same latitude, and which cost us so much treasure yearly to
purchase, and which, as has been tried, would prosper here as well as in
the countries from which we fetch them?

What a consumption of English manufacture would follow such a plantation?
and what an increase of trade would necessarily attend an increase of
people there?

I have not room to enlarge here upon these heads; they are fully stated in
the said Plan of English Commerce, and in several other tracts of trade
lately published by the same author, and to that I refer. See the Plan,
chap. iii. page 335. and chap. v. page 363.

I come next to the consumption at home, and here indeed the proof lies
heavy upon ourselves; nothing but an unaccountable supreme negligence of
our own apparent advantages can be the cause of the whole grievance; such
a negligence, as I think, no nation but the English are, or can be guilty
of; I mean no nation that has the like advantage of a manufacture, and
that has a hundred thousand packs of wool every year unwrought up, and a
million of people unemployed.

N. B. All our manufactures, whether of wool, silk, or thread, and all
other wares, hard or soft, though we have a very great variety, yet do not
employ all our people, by a great many; nay, we have some whole counties
into which the woollen, or silk, or linen manufacture, may be said never
to have set their feet, I mean as to the working part; or so little as not
to be worth naming; such in particular as Cambridge, Huntingdon, Hertford,
Bedford; the first three are of late indeed come into the spinning part a
little, but it is but very little; the like may be said of the counties of
Cheshire, Stafford, Derby, and Lincoln, in all which very little, if any,
manufactures are carried on; neither are the counties of Kent, Sussex,
Surry, or Hampshire, employed in any of the woollen manufactures worth
mentioning; the last indeed on the side about Alton and Alresford, may be
said to do a little; and the first just at Canterbury and Cranbrook. But
what is all they do compared to the extent of four counties so populous
that it is thought there are near a million of people in them?

Seeing then, I say, there are yet