test and best men (I mean what we call
men of their hands) in the world.

These are great things to advance in our own favour, and yet to pretend
not to be partial too; and, therefore, I shall give my reasons, which I
think support my opinion, and they shall be as short as the heads
themselves, that I may not go too much off from my subject.

1. We are the greatest trading country in the world, because we have the
greatest exportation of the growth and product of our land, and of the
manufacture and labour of our people; and the greatest importation and
consumption of the growth, product, and manufactures of other countries
from abroad, of any nation in the world.[37]

2. Our climate is the best and most agreeable, because a man can be more
out of doors in England than in other countries. This was King Charles
II.'s reason for it, and I cannot name it, without doing justice to his
majesty in it.

3. Our men are the stoutest and best, because, strip them naked from the
waist upwards, and give them no weapons at all but their hands and
heels, and turn them into a room, or stage, and lock them in with the
like number of other men of any nation, man for man, and they shall beat
the best men you shall find in the world.

From this digression, which I hope will not be disagreeable, as it is
not very tedious, I come back to my first observation, that England is a
trading country, and two things I offer from that head.

First, our tradesmen are not, as in other countries, the meanest of our
people.

Secondly, some of the greatest and best, and most flourishing families,
among not the gentry only, but even the nobility, have been raised from
trade, owe their beginning, their wealth, and their estates, to trade;
and, I may add,

Thirdly, those families are not at all ashamed of their original, and,
indeed, have no occasion to be ashamed of it.

It is true, that in England we have a numerous and an illustrious
nobility and gentry; and it is true, also, that not so many of those
families have raised themselves by the sword as in other nations, though
we have not been without men of fame in the field too.

But trade and learning have been the two chief steps by which our
gentlemen have raised their relations, and have built their fortunes;
and from which they have ascended up to the prodigious height, both in
wealth and number, which we see them now risen to.

As so many of our noble and wealthy families are raised by,