Secondly, as to the manufactures, high excises in time of peace are utterly destructive to that principal part of England’s wealth; for if malt, coals, salt, leather, and other things, bear a great price, the wages of servants, workmen, and artificers, will consequently rise, for the income must bear some proportion with the expense; and if such as set the poor to work find wages for labour or manufacture advance upon them, they must rise in the price of their commodity, or they cannot live, all which would signify little, if nothing but our own dealings among one another were thereby affected; but it has a consequence far more pernicious in relation to our foreign trade, for it is the exportation of our own product that must make England rich; to be gainers in the balance of trade, we must carry out of our own product what will purchase the things of foreign growth that are needful for our own consumption, with some overplus either in bullion or goods to be sold in other countries, which overplus is the profit a nation makes by trade, and it is more or less according to the natural frugality of the people that export, or as from the low price of labour and manufacture they can afford the commodity cheap, and at a rate not to be undersold in foreign markets. The Dutch, whose labour and manufactures are dear by reason of home excises, can notwithstanding sell cheap abroad, because this disadvantage they labour under is balanced by the parsimonious temper of their people; but in England, where this frugality is hardly to be introduced, if the duties upon our home consumption are so large as to raise considerably the price of labour and manufacture, all our commodities for exportation must by degrees so advance in the prime value, that they cannot be sold at a rate which will give them vent in foreign markets, and we must be everywhere undersold by our wiser neighbours. But the consequence of such duties in times of peace will fall most heavily upon our woollen manufactures, of which most have more value from the workmanship than the material; and if the price of this workmanship be enhanced, it will in a short course of time put a necessity upon those we deal with of setting up manufactures of their own, such as they can, or of buying goods of the like kind and use from nations that can afford them cheaper. And in this point we are to consider, that the bulk of our woollen exports does not consist in draperies made of the fine wool, peculiar to our soil, but is composed of coarse broad cloths, such as Yorkshire cloths, kerseys, which make a great part of our exports, and may be, and are made of a coarser wool, which is to be had in other countries. So that we are not singly to value ourselves upon the material, but also upon the manufacture, which we should make as easy as we can, by not laying over-heavy burdens upon the manufacturer. And our woollen goods being two-thirds of our