In The Year
1662, According To D'Avenant, The Inspector General Of The Customs, Our
Imports Amounted To 4,016,019_L_., And Our Exports Only To 2,022,812_L_.;
The Balance Against The Nation Being Nearly Two Millions.
In the last year
of the seventeenth century, according to the same official authority, there
was exported to England from all parts, 6,788,166_l_.:
Of this sum, our
woollen manufactures were to the value of 2,932,292_l_.; so that there was
an increase of our exports since 1662, of 4,765,534_l_. The yearly average
of all the merchandize imported from, and exported to the north of Europe,
from Michaelmas, 1697, to Christmas, 1701, is exhibited in the following
table:
Annual Countries. Imported from. Exported to. Loss
Denmark and Sweden 76,215_l_ 39,543_l. 36,672_l_.
East Country 181,296 149,893 31,403
Russia 112,252 58,884 53,568
Sweden 212,094 57,555 154,539
- - - - -
Total annual average loss 275,982_l_.
II. Ships. In the year 1530, the ship which first sailed on a trading
voyage to Guinea, and thence to the Brazils, was regarded as remarkably
large; her burden amounted to 250 tons. And in Wheeler's Treatise of
Commerce, published in 1601, we are informed, that about 60 years before he
wrote (which would be about 1541), there were not above four ships (besides
those of the royal navy) that were above 120 tons each, in the river
Thames; and we learn from Monson, in his Naval Tracts, that about 20 years
later, most of our ships of burden were purchased from the east countrymen,
or inhabitants of the south shores of the Baltic, who likewise carried on
the greatest trade of our merchants in their own vessels.
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