Baltic trade have been lately carried on in a more disadvantageous way than ever; they always drained us of money; but this in some measure was compensated by giving employment to near a hundred sail of ships; but now they do not employ five ships, and for a great while have exported between 3000l, and 4000l. per annum. As to the Guinea trade, this war has brought it to a very low ebb, the French having disturbed our colonies, and destroyed our fortresses and places of strength upon the coast of Afric. The neglect in settling the African trade has forced the plantations [in America] for their support to deal with foreigners for negroes, and consequently to traffic with them in return for those negroes. Some of our West India plantations have been likewise very much dispeopled lately by plagues and earthquakes; and in some parts, during the late war, the natives are grown upon us; and in other places we have been harassed and ruined by the French. Our East India Trade is also in a very bad condition; losses abroad and discouragements at home have very much diminished the capital stock. The late piratical attempts on the Mogul's subjects and allies in the Red Sea have brought difficulties upon the Company's affairs in India not easily to be overcome; and these piracies are partly the effect of that loose administration with which war is accompanied; for the ships which have committed these depredations have been chiefly fitted out from the West India ports: if the governors there had kept a jealous eye over these freebooters and buccaneers—if they had narrowly watched their goings out and their comings in—if, instead of sharing in the spoil (which perhaps has been practised), they had compelled suspected persons to give good security for their behaviour, or laid an embargo on their ships—and if they had been vigorous in seizing and prosecuting these pirates at their return (the contrary of which is but too notorious), such wicked actions and breaches of the laws of God and nations could never have been committed."[1]
Davenant, however, argues that, notwithstanding all it
- ↑ Discourses on the Public Revenues, &c., in Works, i. 898.
