2dly. "That other merchants, besides the Merchant Adventurers' Company, may freely trade with dyed and dressed cloths, and all sorts of coloured cloths, into Germany and the Low Countries." Much annoyance appears to have resulted to this island, from the progress which the manufacturers in Holland still continued to make, and some curious speculations were of course formed in the minds of the ingenious. In 1651, a scheme was laid before the English commonwealth, for obtaining from the court of Spain an exclusive right to purchase _all_ the Spanish wool; or, in other words, to ruin the Holland market, by stopping the supplies. The projector observed, "That this proposed preemption would totally dissolve the woollen manufacture of Holland, which, by means of that wool (Spanish), hath of late years mightily increased, to the destruction of the vent of all fine cloths, of English manufacture, in Holland, France, and the east country; and hath drawn from us considerable numbers of weavers, dyers, and cloth workers, now settled at Leyden, and other towns in Holland, by whose help they have very much improved their skill in cloth, and have made in that one province (one year with another) 24,000 or 26,000 cloths yearly. That the Hollanders have of late years bought and exported from Biscay, four-fifth parts at least of all their wools, and have sold there proportionally of their own country stuffs." This was certainly a novel method of accomplishing an end by a sweeping monopoly; but the theory was too fine-spun ever to be reducible to practice. (52.) _Fluctuating State of the Trade between 1635 and 1693._--By the great act of tonnage and poundage, passed in 1660, on the restoration of Charles II., taxes were imposed, among other things, on the exportation of woollen manufactures, and it was not till the reign of William, that the wretched policy of such regulations was discovered, and a law was passed in 1700, by which the duties on woollens were abolished, because in the words of the act (ll & 12 William III. chap. 20), "the wealth and prosperity of the kingdom doth, in a great measure, depend on the improvement of its woollen manufactures, and the profitable trade carried on by the exportation thereof."