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poor of any other nation in Europe; they make better wages of their
work, and spend more of the money upon their backs and bellies, than in
any other country. This expense of the poor, as it causes a prodigious
consumption both of the provisions, and of the manufactures of our
country at home, so two things are undeniably the consequence of that
part.

1. The consumption of provisions increases the rent and value of the
lands, and this raises the gentlemen's estates, and that again increases
the employment of people, and consequently the numbers of them, as well
those who are employed in the husbandry of land, breeding and feeding of
cattle, &c, as of servants in the gentlemen's families, who, as their
estates increase in value, so they increase their families and
equipages.

2. As the people get greater wages, so they, I mean the same poorer part
of the people, clothe better, and furnish better, and this increases the
consumption of the very manufactures they make; then that consumption
increases the quantity made, and this creates what we call inland trade,
by which innumerable families are employed, and the increase of the
people maintained, and by which increase of trade and people the present
growing prosperity of this nation is produced.

The whole glory and greatness of England, then, being thus raised by
trade, it must be unaccountable folly and ignorance in us to lessen that
one article in our own esteem, which is the only fountain from whence we
all, take us as a nation, are raised, and by which we are enriched and
maintained. The Scripture says, speaking of the riches and glory of the
city of Tyre--which was, indeed, at that time, the great port or
emporium of the world for foreign commerce, from whence all the silks
and fine manufactures of Persia and India were exported all over the
western world--'That her merchants were princes;' and, in another place,
'By thy traffic thou hast increased thy riches.' (Ezek. xxviii. 5.)
Certain it is, that our traffic has increased our riches; and it is also
certain, that the flourishing of our manufactures is the foundation of
all our traffic, as well our merchandise as our inland trade.

The inland trade of England is a thing not easily described; it would,
in a word, take up a whole book by itself; it is the foundation of all
our wealth and greatness; it is the support of all our foreign trade,
and of our manufacturing, and, as I have hitherto written, of the