the furniture of but a mean
house must send them, and how many people are every where employed
about it; nay, and the meaner the furniture, the more people and places
employed. For example:

The hangings, suppose them to be ordinary linsey-woolsey, are made at
Kidderminster, dyed in the country, and painted, or watered, at London;
the chairs, if of cane, are made at London; the ordinary matted chairs,
perhaps in the place where they live; tables, chests of drawers, &c.,
made at London; as also looking-glass; bedding, &c., the curtains,
suppose of serge from Taunton and Exeter, or of camblets, from Norwich,
or the same with the hangings, as above; the ticking comes from the west
country, Somerset and Dorsetshire; the feathers also from the same
country; the blankets from Whitney in Oxfordshire; the rugs from
Westmoreland and Yorkshire; the sheets, of good linen, from Ireland;
kitchen utensils and chimney-furniture, almost all the brass and iron
from Birmingham and Sheffield; earthen-ware from Stafford, Nottingham,
and Kent; glass ware from Sturbridge in Worcestershire, and London.

I give this list to explain what I said before, namely, that there is no
particular place in England, where all the manufactures are made, but
every county or place has its peculiar sort, or particular manufacture,
in which the people are wholly employed; and for all the rest that is
wanted, they fetch them from other parts.[41]

But, then, as what is thus wanted by every particular person, or family,
is but in small quantities, and they would not be able to send for it to
the country or town where it is to be bought, there are shopkeepers in
every village, or at least in every considerable market-town, where the
particulars are to be bought, and who find it worth their while to
furnish themselves with quantities of all the particular goods, be they
made where and as far off as they will; and at these shops the people
who want them are easily supplied.

Nor do even these shopkeepers go or send to all the several counties
where those goods are made--that is to say, to this part for the cloth,
or to that for the lining; to another for the buttons, and to another
for the thread; but they again correspond with the wholesale dealers in
London, where there are particular shops or warehouses for all these;
and they not only furnish the country shopkeepers, but give them large
credit, and sell them great quantities of goods, by which they again
ar