nufacture in Europe,[39] so they not only employ
more people, but those people gain the most money, that is to say, have
the best wages for their work of any people in the world; and yet, which
is peculiar to England, the English manufactures are, allowing for their
goodness, the cheapest at market of any in the world, too. Even France
itself, after all the pains they are at to get our wool, and all the
expense they have been at to imitate our manufactures, by getting over
our workmen, and giving them even greater wages than they had here, have
yet made so little proficiency in it, and are so far from outselling us
in foreign markets, that they still, in spite of the strictest
prohibitions, send hither, and to Holland and Germany, for English
broad-cloths, druggets, duroys, flannels, serges, and several other
sorts of our goods, to supply their own. Nor can they clothe themselves
to their satisfaction with their own goods; but if any French gentleman
of quality comes over hither from France, he is sure to bring no more
coats with him than backs, but immediately to make him new clothes as
soon as he arrives, and to carry as many new suits home with him at his
return, as he can get leave to bring ashore when he comes there--a
demonstration that our manufacture exceeds theirs, after all their
boasts of it, both in goodness and in cheapness, even by their own
confession. But I am not now to enter upon the particular manufactures,
but the general trade in the manufacture; this particular being a trade
of such a magnitude, it is to be observed for our purpose, that the
greatness of it consists of two parts:--

1. The consumption of it at home, including our own plantations and
factories.

2. The exportation of it to foreign parts, exclusive of the said
plantations and factories.

It is the first of these which is the subject of my present discourse,
because the tradesmen to whom, and for whose instruction these chapters
are designed, are the people principally concerned in the making all
these manufactures, and wholly and solely concerned in dispersing and
circulating them for the home consumption; and this, with some
additions, as explained above, I call _inland trade_.

The home-consumption of our own goods, as it is very great, so it has
one particular circumstance attending it, which exceedingly increases it
as a trade, and that is, that besides the numbers of people which it
employs in the raising the materials, and