Adam Smith, when commenting in his "Wealth of Nations," on the laws relating to wool, reprobates severely the ill-judged compliance of our government, in yielding to the solicitation of our merchants, and allowing them to sway with iron rule the commerce of the world. "The severity of many of the laws which have been enacted for the security of the revenue, is very justly complained of, as imposing heavy penalties upon actions, which, antecedent to the statutes that declared them to be crimes, had always been understood to be innocent. But the cruelest of our revenue laws, I will venture to affirm, are mild and gentle in comparison to some of those which the clamour of our merchants and manufacturers has extorted from the legislature, for the support of their own absurd and oppressive monopolies. Like the laws of Draco, these laws may be said to be all written in blood." None of the laws, however, were effectual, not even the one passed in the middle of the seventeenth century, by which the offence was rendered capital. In spite of the vigilance of our government, a contraband trade in wool was long carried on between the inhabitants of the French and English coasts, especially those of Sussex, by a class of men called _Owlers_, from their only venturing abroad in the night, and who were tempted to despise the penalty, with an intrepidity astonishing to the rest of Europe, by the high prices that were sure to be afforded to them in the Gallic market. Again, during the first half of the eighteenth century, large quantities of wool were constantly smuggled from Ireland to France, by which our trading interests were considerably injured, and the plans for suppressing exportation shown to be worse than useless. (51.) _Prosperity of the Dutch Manufacturers._--The woollen manufactures of the Hollanders were first established in 1636, or 1637, by one hundred and forty English families, who went from Norfolk and Suffolk, to settle at Leyden, and Alkmaer. The Dutch manufacture of fine woollen cloths was, however, commenced much earlier, or about 1624, at which time they began to interfere with the English trade in the Netherlands; insomuch that, in the twenty-second year of the reign of James I., a certificate was given to the Parliament of 25,000 cloths having been made that year in Holland. Upon this the House of Commons resolved, 1st, "That the merchant adventurers setting impost upon our cloth, is a grievance, and ought not to be continued; and that all other merchants promiscuously, as well as that company, may transport everywhere northern and western kersies, and new draperies."