e and blood of the whole nation, the
soul of our trade, the top of all manufactures, and nothing can be erected
that either rivals it or any way lessens it or interferes with it, without
wounding us in the more noble and vital part, and, in effect, endangering
the whole.

To set up a manufacture of painted linen, which, touching the particular
pride and gay humour of the ordinary sort of people, intercepts the
woollen manufacture, which they would otherwise be clothed with, is so far
wounding and supplanting the woollen manufacture for a paltry trifle, and
though it is indeed in itself but a trifle, yet as the poorer sort of
people, the servants, and the wives and children of the farmers and
country people, and of the labouring poor, who wear this new fangle, are a
vast multitude, the wound strikes deeper into the quantity than most
people imagine, makes a large abatement of the consumption of wool,
lessening the labour of the poor manufacturers very considerably; and on
this account, I say, it ought not to be encouraged, though it be our own
manufacture.

Do we not, from this very principle, prohibit the planting tobacco in
England, though our own land would produce it? Do we not know there are
coals in Blackheath, Muzzle-hill, and other places, but that we must not
work them that we may not hurt the navigation? The reason is exactly the
same here.

This consideration is so pungent in itself, and so naturally touches every
Englishman that has the good of his country at heart, that one would think
there should be no occasion for an act of parliament to oblige them to it;
but they should be moved by a mere concern of mind, and generous endeavour
for the public prosperity, not to fall in with or encourage any new
project, any new custom or fashion, without first inquiring particularly
whether it would not be injurious to the prosperity of the main and grand
article of the English Commerce, the woollen manufacture.

Were this public spirit among us, we need fear no upstart manufacture
breaking in upon us, whether printed linen or anything else; for no people
of sense, having the good of their country at heart, would touch it, much
less make it a general fashion. But, as the Plan of English Commerce
observes, our people, the ladies especially, have such a passion for the
fashion, that they have been the greatest enemies to our woollen
manufacture; and I must add that this passion for the fashion of printed
linens at thi