'The progress made in industry and the arts imposed limits, ina much more effective way than the rigour of laws could do, to thepernicious habit of the nobility of maintaining a great number ofservants.Instead of vying with one another in the number andvalour of their retainers, the nobility were animated by anotherkind of rivalry more in accordance with the spirit of civilisation,inasmuch as they now sought to excel one another in the beauty oftheir houses, the elegance of their equipages, and the costlinessof their furniture.As the people could no longer loiter about inpernicious idleness, in the service of their chieftains andpatrons, they became compelled, by learning some kind of handiwork,to make themselves useful to the community.Laws were again enactedto prevent the export of the precious metals, both coined anduncoined; but as these were well known to be inoperative, theobligation was again imposed on foreign merchants to lay out thewhole proceeds of goods imported by them, in articles of Englishmanufacture.'(12*)In the time of Henry VIII the prices of all articles of foodhad considerably risen, owing to the great number of foreignmanufacturers in London; a sure sign of the great benefit which thehome agricultural industry derived from the development of homemanufacturing industry.
The king, however, totally misjudging the causes and theoperation of this phenomenon, gave ear to the unjust complaints ofthe English against the foreign manufacturers, whom the formerperceived to have always excelled themselves in skill, industry,and frugality.An order of the Privy Council decreed the expulsionof 15,000 Belgian artificers, 'because they had made all provisionsdearer, and had exposed the nation to the risk of a famine.' Inorder to strike at the root of this evil, laws were enacted tolimit personal expenditure, to regulate the style of dress, theprices of provisions, and the rate of wages.This policy naturallywas warmly approved by the Hansards, who acted towards this king inthe same spirit of good-will which they had previously Displayedtowards all those former kings of England whose policy had favouredtheir interests, and which in our days the English display towardsthe kings of Portugal -- they placed their ships of war at hisdisposition.During this king's whole reign the trade of theHansards with England was very active.They possessed both shipsand capital, and knew, not less cleverly than the English do in ourdays, how to acquire influence over peoples and governments who didnot thoroughly understand their own interests.Only their argumentsrested on quite a different basis from those of the trademonopolists of our day.The Hansards based their claim to supplyall countries with manufactures on actual treaties and onimmemorial possession of the trade, whilst the English in our daybase a similar claim on a mere theory, which has for its author oneof their own Custom-house officials.The latter demand in the nameof a pretended science, what the former claimed in the name ofactual treaties and of justice.
