Towards the close of the century the craze for Oriental wares had assumed such proportions that in France Louis XIV enacted sumptuary laws to protect native industries; and in Holland and England the artisans grumbled bitterly over the hard times occasioned by the vogue. The Eastern workmen accepted patterns and supplied orders that natives of Western Europe could not venture to undertake. The guilds and city companies admitted the superiority of Oriental work, and cried aloud for protection. Thus, in 1700, the Joiners’ Company addressed a petition against the importation of manufactured cabinet work from the East Indies. In this they state that they have “of late years arrived at so great a perfection as exceeds all Europe.” “But several merchants and others,” they continue, “have procured to be made in London of late years and sent over to the East Indies patterns and models of all forms of cabinet goods, and have yearly returned from thence such quantities of cabinet wares, manufactured there after the English fashion, that the said trade in England is in great danger of being utterly ruined, etc., etc.” The following goods, manufactured in India, have been imported within these four years, viz.: [Illustration: PLATE LIII.—_Clocks and Details, by Marot._ ] 244 cabinets. 655 tops for stands. 6,580 tea-tables. 818 lacquered boards. 428 chests. 597 sconces. 70 trunks. 589 looking-glasses. 52 screens. 4,120 dressing, comb and powder-boxes. The Japanners also brought their grievances before the authorities in 1710. The taste for japanned goods had forced them to endeavour to make worthy imitations for home consumption, and they thought they were entitled to patronage and tariff protection. The evils are fully indicated in the preamble to their petition: “Many of the artificers (cabinet-makers, turners, goldbeaters and coppersmiths) have brought (the curious and ingenious art and mystery of japanning, so much improved in England of late years) to so great perfection as to exceed all manner of Indian lacquer, and to equal the right japan itself, by enduring the fire in the boiling of liquors. “Also it will, if encouraged, vastly improve both the wood and iron trades for cisterns, monteiths, punch-bowls, tea-tables and several sorts of ironware, which would be useless if not improved by our English lacquer. “But the merchants, sending over English patterns and models to India, and bringing such quantities of Indian lacquered wares (especially within the last two years), great numbers of families are by that means reduced to miserable poverty.”