The Economics of Employment in

England, 1660-1713

By T. E. GREGORY,

Cassel Reader in Commerce, University of London. Meaning is the foundation of system in History.-LORD HALDANE'S Meaning of Truth in History, p. 24 (Creighton Lecture, 1914).

I.

No period in English economic history has suffered more from the tendency of subjecting facts to a pre-conceived notion than has the Restoration period. Regarded by some as the period of neomercantilism, more recently by others as the period of incipient capitalism, the interrelation of ideas has not been analysed as an end in itself, before the final judgment has been passed. This process is the more to be deprecated inasmuch as both of the categories of thought under which the web of fact and argument has been subsumed are vague and capable of more than one construction. The following paper is an attempt at a positive analysis of the system of thought of the half-century which lies between the Restoration of Charles II and the Treaty of Utrecht, as regards labour and labour problems. Only then will it be possible to attempt evaluation from an ideal standpoint.

II.

The basis of thought during the period was the desirability of a large population. It is a mistake to suppose, says Petty, that the Greatness and Glory of a Prince lyeth rather in the extent of his Territory, than in the number and industry of his people, well united and governed."1 "Fewness of People," he says elsewhere in the same work, "is real poverty; and a Nation wherein are eight millions of people is more than twice as rich as the same scope of land wherein are but four; for the same Governors which are the great charge may serve near as well, for the greater as the lesser number." So Defoe, "I cannot but note how ... the Glory, the Strength, the Riches, the Trade and all that's valuable in a Nation as to its figure in the world depends upon the number of 1 Petty, Treatise of Taxes. Hull's Edition of Petty, Vol. I, p. 22.

2 Ibid., p. 34.

its People, be they never so mean or poor.' People, argues Davenant, are "the most important strength of any Nation." Coke re-echoes Petty when he says that " It is not the greatness of the extent of a country which makes it formidable, but the number and well governing of the People." This insistence on a large population was based on the conviction that a large population meant a large trade, that a small population implied a small trade. A large population consumed more than a small one, a small population produced less than a large one would. The assumption is, of course, a static one, it implies a limited rate of production and consumption per capita. But it was as wealth producers and consumers that people were demanded. It was in this twofold aspect that foreigners were to be welcomed. "Unless foreigners come in amongst us, in few years there will not be people to manure our lands, eat our provisions, wear our manufactures or manufacture the staple commodities that are of the growth of the Kingdom." Here the twofold idea is very well put. The consumption idea is again prominent in Brewster. "The increase of hands in labour improves and increases manufactory, even of the very expence of them that are added: one man that works may have five or six that only eats and wears." So again Coke," Multitude and concourse of People advance trade, scarcity of people diminish trade."

As the strength and grandeur of every country is founded in the number of the inhabitants, so is the riches and trade of it, for every man's necessities are supplied by trade, so that . . . in the whole, trade is increased . . . as men live more or less on Society and Conversation; and therefore, wherever people are thin or few, they are poor, lazy, rude and of little use to the publick."

...

The logical conclusion of this line of thought was obviously that, whatever the moral quality of demand, the volume of production depended upon it. "The main spur to Trade, or rather to industry and ingenuity, is the exorbitant appetite of men, which they will take pains to gratify and so be disposed to work, when nothing else will incline them to it; for did men content themselves with the bare necessarie, we should have a poor world, . . . now in their pursuit of those appetites, other men less exorbitant are benefited. . . . Countries which have sumptuary Laws are generally poor; for when men by those Laws are confined to narrower expence than otherwise they would be, they are at the same time discouraged from the industry and ingenuity which they would have imployed 1 Defoe, Giving Alms no Charity, 1704, in Genuine Works, Vol. II, p. 428.

2 Davenant, Discourses on the Public Revenues and on the Trade of England, Dis. III, Vol. II, p. 2. Edition of 1771.

3 Roger Coke, Reflections upon the East India and Royal African Companies, 1695. 1029, e. 106.

4 The Grand Concern of England explained in several proposals offered to the Consideration of Parliament, 1673. Harl. Miscell., Vol. VIII, p. 555.

5 Essays on Trade and Navigation, 1695, p. 8. (For Brewster, see D.N.B.)

6 Coke, Discourse of Trade. Pt. I: Reasons of the decay of the English Trade, 1029, e. 10.

7 Coke, Reflections, etc., p. 15.

in obtaining wherewithal to support them in the full latitude of expence they desire.” 1

Defoe puts the matter even more clearly in The Compleat English Tradesman." "Trade is propagated by our crimes, the people support one another by their extravagance and luxury, their Gaiety and Pride gluttony and drunkenness assist to maintain the Nation, the people grow rich by the people, they support one another; the Taylor, the Draper, the Mercer, the Coach-makei, etc., and their servants, all haunt the public houses; the masters to the taverns, the servants to the ale-houses, and thus the vintner and the victualler thrive and grow rich. Those again getting before hand in the world must have fine clothes, fine houses and fine furniture; their lives grow gay, as the Husbands grow rich and they go on to the Draper, the Mercer, the Taylor, the Upholsterer, etc., to buy fine clothes and nice goods; Thus the Draper and Mercer and Taylor grow rich too, money begets money, trade circulates and the tide of money flows in with it, one hand washes the other hand, and both hands wash the face." 3 Even by the Balance of Trade fanatics the consumption of "fripperies" is condoned if the labour that goes to make them is English labour. The tendency to regard all consumption as productive should have been strengthened by the assumption that the total wealth of the community was neither increased nor diminished by payments from one subject to another in the realm—an assumption derived partly, at any rate, from the current theory of the Balance of Trade, for, runs Davenant's argument," by what is consumed at home, one loseth only what another gets and the nation in general is not all the richer.' "5 It ought to have been seen that neither was it poorer, but unfortunately the assumption that by foreign trade the wealth of the nation was actually increased in a way the home trade was unable to bring about led to a distinction being drawn between trade and labour useful for producing articles for foreign trade, and trade only serving

Dudley North, Discourse upon Trade, 1691. Johns Hopkins Reprints, p. 27. Davenant, though holding that thrift does proportionately enrich a whole people, as it betters the condition of a private man," still gives a qualified assent; perhaps it is not impossible but that our industry would be less active if it were not awakened and incited by some irregular appetites which are more easily found fault with than avowed."-Discourse, Vol. I, p. 390.

So far as I am aware no English writer has noticed the bearing of this passage on Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. Professor Sombart has used the passage in his Der Bourgeois (1913).

p. 118, cf.: "It may indeed be true that the Increase of Crime is the increase of Commerce and the wickedness of the time is the blessing of the Trade, the Vanity, the luxury, the folly, and even the vice of the People is the cause of that increase ... (p. 147).

Samuel Fortrey, England's Interest and Improvement, 1663: "That the excess of this expence consist chiefly in the art, manufacture and workmanship of the commodity made in our own country; whereby ingenuity would be encouraged, the people employed and our treasure kept at home, so as the Prince would be nothing damnified by the excess for the ruine of one would raise as much on other of his subjects." Johns Hopkins Reprints, p. 27. See also Cunningham, Growth, etc., Modern Times, p. 392. Dr. Cunningham seems to me to be mistaken in assuming the truth of J. S. Mill's dictum, "demand for goods is not demand for labour." An Essay on the East India Trade, Works, Vol. I, p. 103.

to satisfy the "unproductive" home consumption. At the same time the benefit of a large consumption at home still remained in the background of consciousness; this being justified on the line of argument that if there was to be consumption at home, home production was preferable to the importation of foreign goods, on which the nation lost positively.

Nevertheless, the resulting confusion as to what was, or was not, beneficial consumption did not interfere with the desirability of population as a factor of production. It tended, however, to make the phrase "increase of population" synonymous with "increase of workers in those industries which are desirable.” So in the assertion " There is nothing so much wanting in England as people: and of all sorts of people, the industrious and laborious sort, and handicraftsmen are wanted to till and improve our land and help to manufacture the staple commodities of the Kingdom: which would add greatly to the riches thereof." Population was looked upon mainly as a factor of production, only incidentally as a factor in consumption, owing to a theory of foreign trade which threw suspicion upon home consumption.

3

Now a working population could be drawn either from foreign countries or from the inhabitants of this country, and both possibilities led to a mass of proposals. The first possibility led to the inclusion among the proposals of the economists of the day, of the naturalization of foreigners. The second possibility led to a double examination of tendencies, (1) as to the tendency of plantations unduly to depopulate the Mother Country, (2) as to the tendency of the current methods of relieving the poor to withdraw men from the Labour Market.

1. Opinion was decidedly divided on the advisability of allowing emigration to the plantations. Coke argued roundly that "the Trade of England and the Fishing Trade are so much diminished, 1 Fortrey: "Our case should therefore be to increase chiefly those things which are of least charge at home, and greatest value abroad," loc. cit., p. 19. Davenant : "It is the interest of all trading nations whatsoever that their home consumption should be little, of a cheap and foreign growth and their own manufactures should be sold at the highest market and sold abroad; since by what is consumed at home, one loseth only what another gets, and the nation in general is not at all the richer, but all foreign consumption is a clear and certain profit. So that in the woollen manufacture England does not get by what is spent here by the people, but by what is sold abroad in other countries," thus leading him to justify the importation of East India goods, op. cit., I, 103; cf. also Child, A New Discourse of Trade: "I do agree fully... that luxury and prodigality are as well prejudicial to Kingdoms as to Private Families, and that the expence of Foreign commodities especially foreign manufactures is the worst expence a nation can be inclined to, and ought to be prevented as much as possible." (Preface.) "We are not half so much given to Hospitality and good Housekeeping as in former days, when our greatest expence was upon our Bellies, the most destructive Consumption that can happen to a nation," ibid. 57. Also Brewster, op. cit., ".. there is a receiv'd opinion to be removed and that is, that expence of the Labour and Products of a Country is the support of the Artizans and brings Riches to men of Real Estates " (p. 50).

2 Grand Concern, p. 555.

3 Child, Discourse (141-5) argues for the naturalization of Jews in a manner which shows the suspicion of them entertained by the merchants of the day. Roger Coke was in advance of the majority of the writers of the day in desiring the immigration of Roman Catholic artificers.

by how much they might have been supplied by those men who are diverted in our American plantations." Child argues that although a loss of population is in general undesirable, yet that the settlers of our North American plantations, being largely malcontents with the state of affairs in England, would have been lost in any case, whilst they serve a useful purpose in the Plantations by employing English shipping and taking English goods. Davenant 3 argues on the same lines, suggesting at the same time that England should be made a "General Asylum" and then our own malcontents may retire without any prejudice: for the recruits of people such a course might produce, would answer the annual evacuation occasioned by our West India Colonies."4

2

2. The unanimous opinion of the writers of the time was that the poor-law of Elizabeth tended to reduce the available supply of labour, a result also produced by indiscriminate charity. The writer of the Grand Concern argues that the cost of the poor is £70,000 a month and this is employed only to maintain idle Persons: doth great hurt rather than good: makes a world of poor, more than otherwise would be, prevents industry and laboriousness: men and women growing so idle and proud, that they will not work, but lie upon the parish wherein they dwell for maintenance." The Poor Law is "a thing most piously designed: yet proving an encouragement to thievery and idleness, a charge to the industrious inhabitants of every Parish and an injury to the whole Nation." • So Brewster," There is no Nation I ever heard of, who by a Compulsory Law, raiseth so much money for the Poor as England doth . . . our Charity is become a Nuisance, and may be thought the greatest mistake of that Blessed Reign, in which that Law passed, which is the idle and impoverished man's Charter for if Shame or Fear of Punishment makes him Earn his Dayly Bread he will do no more, his Children are the Charge of the Parish and his Old Age his Recess from Labour or Care: he makes no Provision for it in the time of his Youth and Strength, because he hath better Security for his Maintenance than money of his own laying up." So also Cary, Davenant and others. 8

1 Discourse of Trade, Pt. I, p. 7.

7

2 Discourse, ch. x, Concerning Plantations: The first settlers of Virginia and Barbadoes were such as "could probably never have lived at home to do service for their Country but must have come to be hanged or starved or aged untimely by some of those miserable Diseases that proceed from want or vice, or else have sold themselves for soldiers... in the Quarrels of our Neighbours " (184). 3 Works, Vol. II, on the Plantation Trade, p. 5. He goes on: "But, if... the money collected were employed to set all of them that are able to work to some kind of employment or other, suitable to their capacities ..it would be of infinite use and advantage to the Nation." 6 Reasons for a Limited Exportation of Wool, p. 12.

Ibid., p. 6.

7 Loc. cit., p. 59.

8 Cary, p. 157: "But above all our Laws to put the Poor at work are short and defective, tending rather to maintain them so, than to raise them to a better way of living." The Laws render the Poor more bold, when they know the Parish Officers are bound either to provide them work or give them maintenance." Davenant, cf. Essay on E.I. Trade, Vol. I, p. 100. Also The Trade of England Revived, 1681: The poor addict themselves to idleness and pilfering because they know that if they come to want the Parish is bound to keep them."