This puts me in mind of our wool, which, considering the posture of our affairs, and the behaviour of the poor, I sincerely believe, ought not, upon any account, to be carried abroad: but if we look into the reason, why suffering it to be fetched away is so pernicious, our heavy complaint and lamentations that it is exported can be no great credit to us. Considering the mighty and manifold hazards that must be run before it can be got off the coast, and safely landed beyond sea, it is manifest that the foreigners, before they can work our wool, must pay more for it very considerably, than what we can have it for at home. Yet, notwithstanding this great difference in the prime cost, they can afford to sell the manufactures made of it cheaper at foreign markets than ourselves. This is the disaster we groan under, the intolerable mischief, without which the exportation of that commodity could be no greater prejudice to us than that of tin or lead, as long as our hands were fully employed, and we had still wool to spare. There is no people yet come to higher perfection in the woollen manufacture, either as to dispatch or goodness of work, at least in the most considerable branches, than ourselves; and therefore what we complain of can only depend on the difference in the management of the poor, between other nations and ours. If the labouring people in one country will work twelve hours in a day, and six days in a week, and in another they are employed but eight hours in a day, and not above four days in a week the one is obliged to have nine hands for what the other does with four. But if, moreover, the living, the food, and raiment, and what is consumed by the workmen of the industrious, costs but half the money of what is expended among an equal number of the other, the consequence must be, that the first will have the work of eighteen men for the same price as the other gives for the work of four. I would not insinuate, neither do I think, that the difference, either in diligence or necessaries of life between us and any neighbouring nation, is near so great as what I speak of, yet I would have it considered, that half of that difference, and much less, is sufficient to over-balance the disadvantage they labour under as to the price of wool.