As We Wish To Be Minute And Enter Into Detail, While Our
Commerce And Shipping Were Yet In Their Infancy, In Order To Mark More
Decidedly Its Progress, We Shall Subjoin The Particulars Of This Return.
None of the other ports had 100 vessels: Newcastle had sixty-three,
measuring 11,000 tons; and Ipswich thirty-nine, measuring 11,170; but there
certainly is some mistake in these two instances, either in the number of
the ships, or the tonnage. The small number of men employed at Hull arose
from eighty of their ships being at that time laid up.
III. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the great rivals of
the English in their commerce were the Dutch: they had preceded the English
to most countries; and, even where the latter had preceded them, they soon
insinuated themselves and became formidable rivals: this was the case
particularly with respect to the trade to Archangel. Some curious and
interesting particulars of this rivalry are given by Sir Walter Raleigh, in
his Observations concerning the Trade and Commerce of England with the
Dutch and other foreign Nations, which he had laid before King James. In
this work he maintains that the Dutch have the advantage over the English
by reason of the privileges they gave to foreigners, by making their
country the storehouse of all foreign commodities; by the lowness of their
customs; by the structure of their ships, which hold more, and require
fewer hands than the English; and by their fishery. He contends that
England is better situated for a general storehouse for the rest of Europe
than Holland: yet no sooner does a dearth of corn, wine, fish, &c. happen
in England, than forthwith the Hollanders, Embedners, or Humburghers, load
50 or 100 ships, and bring their articles to England. Amsterdam, he
observes, is never without 700,000 quarters of corn, none of it the growth
of Holland; and a dearth of only one year in any other part of Europe
enriches Holland for seven years. In the course of a year and a half,
during a scarcity in England, there was carried away from the ports of
Southampton, Bristol, and Exeter alone, nearly 200,000_l_.: and if London
and the rest of England were included, there must have been 2,000,000 more.
The Dutch, he adds, have a regular trade to England with 500 or 600 vessels
annually, whereas we trade, not with fifty to their country. After entering
into details respecting the Dutch fishery, by means of which, he says, they
sell herrings annually to the value of upwards of one million and a half
sterling, whereas England scarcely any, he reverts to the other branches of
Dutch commerce, as compared with ours.
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