A Short History of English Commerce and Industry

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1900. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII. THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM AND THE OLD ECONOMICS. (From the Tudora to the Georges.) Trade And Industry In England. I. The Tudor monarchy favoured the commercial and industrial classes. The Tudor monarchy, writes Mr. Goldwin Smith in his Political History of the United Kingdom, rested on the middle classes, which, in spite of the Wars of the Eoses, had been all the time gaining ground, and, being commercial and industrial, welcomed after the civil war a strong government, thinking less, for the time, of political liberty than of liberty to ply the loom, speed the plough, grow the wool, and spread the sail. A nation enriching itself in peace and submissive to the fatherly rule of a wise king 1485-1509 was the ideal of the first Tudor. The practice of his son and successor, in reducing the amount of good metal contained in the coins, or debasing the currency, as it is called, departed from this ideal, and dealt a blow to the economic 1509-1547 welfare of the nation, and especially of the labouring classes, which was none the less deadly, Cf. The United Kingdom: a Political History, vol. i., p. 289. because it was subtle. The pernicious example thus set by Henry VIII. in the later years of his reign was followed at first by the ministers of i547-i553 Edward VI. They also pursued, and extended, the policy of appropriating religious revenues, which, beginning with the monastic houses, was afterwards applied to the funds of the gilds, consecrated to such objects. This policy, indeed, was not responsible for the appearance of pauperism, or its accompanying evils, and the charity of the religious foundations may not, at any rate at the last, have been well or wisely bestowed; but it wrought destruction to an established order of affairs, and ...