perhaps a neighbouring clothier draws his attention to a piece, or
"end," of cloth. "What's this?" "Five and three." "Too low." The "too
high" relates, as may be supposed, to the price per yard; whereas the
"too low" means that the quality of the cloth is lower than the
purchaser requires. Another seller accosts him with "Will this suit
you, Mr. A.?" "_Any English wool?_" "_Not much; it is nearly all
foreign_;" a question and answer which exemplify the disfavour into
which English wool has fallen in the cloth trade. But it is not the
cloth trade alone in which it has fallen into disfavour. The rapid
extension of the worsted manufacture in this country,' says the same
writer in another portion of his work, 'is very remarkable. So long as
efforts were made by English wool-growers to compel the use of the
English wool in cloth-making--efforts which the Legislature for many
years sanctioned by legal enactments--the worsted fabrics made were
chiefly of a coarse and heavy kind, such as "camlets;" but when the
wool trade was allowed to flow into its natural channels by the
removal of restrictions, the value of all the different kinds of wool
became appreciated, and each one was appropriated to purposes for
which it seemed best fitted. The wool of one kind of English sheep
continued in demand for hosiery and coarse worsted goods; and the wool
of the Cashmere and Angora goats came to be imported for worsted goods
of finer quality.' The colonist and the foreign merchant have been
brought into the field, and the home producer labours in vain to
compete with them on what he finds unequal terms.
Hence the difficulties which, in a season of invigorated commerce and
revived trade, continue to bear on the British wool-grower, and which
bid fair _to clear_ him from the soil which he divested of the
original inhabitants. Every new sheep-rearing farm that springs up in
the colonies--whether in Australia, or New Zealand, or Van Diemen's
Land, or Southern Africa--sends him its summons of removal in the form
of huge bales of wool, lower in price and better in quality than he
himself can produce. The sheep-breeders of New Holland and the Cape
threaten to avenge the Rosses of Glencalvie. But to avenge is one
thing, and to right another. The comforts of our poor Highlander have
been deteriorating, and his position lowering, for the last three
ages, and we see no prospect of improvement.