1921 THE CORUNNA PACKETS 533 was shown by the experience of the war, at any rate from 1694 onwards, to be fallacious, but before that France did not appear to depend, like Holland, on external trade. Not only were her natural resources richer, but there was also a political reason :
- la France est si absolue que, tant qu'il y aura de l'argent, elle
en trouvera.' 1 The French home trade and industries would support themselves, and the government would be able to get what it wanted from the wealth so produced and no commercial isolation could weaken France's power of resistance. On the other hand, Dutch industry was in many ways dependent on imports from France. The best instance was that of wool- cards. Good wool-cards could be got only from France, and a pamphleteer of 1690 says that the price has risen from 15 fr. or 16 fr. to 60 fr. 2 In 1689 a cloth manufacturer petitioned the states-general for permission to import wool-cards, maintaining that they were not expressly shut out by the plaklcaat of 8/18 October 1688 ; but he was not successful, so that apparently it was the policy of the states-general to keep up the prohibition even for such 'key commodities'. 3 In 1693, however, they so far relented as to permit the importing of French ' caartebollen ', to prevent the ruin of the wool-dyers through lack of them. 4 But this was an exception : the pamphleteers argued in vain that plums, which came from France, were very good for feeding sailors ; that the inclusion of naval stores in the definition of contraband had driven the rope manufacture to Riga and Stettin ; 5 that no trade should be stopped except that in contraband defined in the narrow old-fashioned way, unless perhaps it were that in brandy and wine, which the Dutch could spare and from which the French king derived part of his revenue. The appeal to imitate their ancestors of the war of independence did not move the states-general. It is tempting to inquire how great a part was played in this obduracy by the currents of protectionist thought which then ran more strongly in Holland than before, but the pamphlets of the protectionists are interesting chiefly for their naive economic fallacies, and probably had little influence. 6 The attempts to protect the industries of brewing and sugar-refining led to no great results. It is difficult not to see the hand of the hack who 1 Quelques considerations sur la necessite cTinterdire k commerce des lettres, 1690. For this pamphlet see below, p. 536. 2 Consideratie om de inlandse gewassen, &c. 3 Res. Stat. Gen. 28 January/7 February 1689. 4 Ibid. 3/13 April 1693. 5 Consideratie. 6 For a general account of them see Laspeyres, Gesch. der wlkswirtsch. Anschauungen der Niederldnder (Preisschrift der Fiirstl. Jablonowskischen Akademie), 1863. The bibliography in this work should be used with great caution ; cf. the author's remark on its origin, p. ix.
