Andrew Yarranton, who brought out in 1677 a remarkable book, entitled "England's Improvement by Land and Sea," might be described as a Pioneer of Protection as well as an early champion of improved inland communication. He considered that the best way of fighting the Dutch, who were then a source of trouble to the country, would be, not to go to war with them, but to capture their trade and commerce. To this end he elaborated a scheme under which, instead of importing every year "vast quantities" of "linen cloth of all sorts," of iron, and of woollen goods, England would "settle" these industries here, fostering them by means of import duties to be imposed on foreign manufactures for a period of seven years, and supplementing those duties by the setting-up of a general system of banking, itself, in turn, {134}made secure by a general land register. The linen industry, he advised, should be established in the counties of Warwick, Leicester, Northampton, and Oxford, where, among other considerations, navigable rivers would be available for the purposes of transport; and he goes on to say, in words which, though written more than two and a quarter centuries ago, seem only to have anticipated much that we hear from the tariff reformers of to-day, that by this means, "we should prevent at least two millions of money a year from being sent out of the Land for Linen Cloth, and keep our people at home who now go beyond the Seas for want of imployment here." In his references to the iron trade, Yarranton speaks of the "infinite quantities of raw iron" then being made in Monmouthshire and the Forest of Dean, and he says that the greatest part of what he calls the "Slow Iron" made in the Forest of Dean "is sent up the Severne to the Forges, into Worcester-shire, Shropshire, Stafford-shire, Warwick-shire and Cheshire, and there it's made into Bar-iron: And because of its kind and gentle nature to work, it is now at Sturbridge, Dudly, Wolverhampton, Sedgley, Wasall, and Burmingham and thereabouts wrought into all small Commodities and diffused all England over, and thereby a great Trade made of it; and when manufactured sent into most parts of the World"; though in Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Derbyshire there were already great and numerous ironworks in which, he adds, "Much Iron is made of Metal or Iron Stone of another nature quite different from that of the Forest of Deane."