I have added a new post, Picking on Cotton. It is a passage taken from William Lecky’s eight-volume history of England in the eighteenth century, first published in 1878. Lecky looks at the ingenious and determined steps taken by the British Government to protect the domestic wool and silk trades from the challenge of cotton from India.
The ‘mercantile’ economics of the period — the great Adam Smith did not publish Wealth of Nations until 1776 — held that wealth was money, and that the task of Government was to bring gold to Britain. The fact that the public liked Indian textiles was of no interest, because wealth was money only, not ease or enjoyment, so in their eyes importing Indian cloth for dresses and furnishings was not increasing national prosperity. It was therefore easy for lobbyists in the wool and silk trades to persuade the Government to introduce punitive regulation on consumers, and prohibitive tariffs on suppliers, and so kill off the Indian cotton trade.
Lecky gives some startling examples of the lengths to which Government lawmakers were willing to go, in protecting the domestic textile industry from competition.