Introduction
Manoel Gonzales tells us that he was a native of Lisbon, educated by the Jesuits. His mother pulled him from the school on suspicion that the priests were after his inheritance, so Manoel set himself to expand his father’s business instead. On April 23rd, 1730 – St George’s Day, as he noted — Gonzales set out for Falmouth, intending to reconnoitre his chosen market.
IT is a great, rich, and powerful kingdom.* Separated by the sea from other countries, so that it cannot be attacked by other nations, but with great trouble and danger. This island is very convenient for trade, being so situated upon a strait, that ships going either east or west are obliged to pass through it. There are also many sea-ports and havens, artificial and natural; so that the English by their situation can extend their trade into all parts of the world.
But there is another thing that renders England rich, viz. the liberty of conscience, granted and allowed to every nation,* whereby great numbers of foreigners are invited to come and trade here sooner than in Spain and other countries, where liberty of conscience is not allowed. No European country can boast of having such a good form of government.* The property of chattels and goods being not precarious as in other countries; so that when a man by his industry gets an estate, his children if he please, and not his lord, shall inherit it.*
Doubts have been raised over the authorship of this text, which has a satirical air and some internal contradictions. Daniel Defoe (?1660-1731), author of “Robinson Crusoe” (1719), “A tour thro’ the whole island of Great Britain” (1724-1727) and “A Plan of the English Commerce” (1728) is sometimes credited with it. For more, see ‘London in 1731’, edited by Henry Morley.
That is, to people of every nationality. From the sixteenth century onwards, the Inquisition in Europe’s Roman Catholic states, such as Portugal, Italy, France, Spain and the Spanish Netherlands, drove tens of thousands of Protestants over the Channel to Britain, Europe’s ‘Asylum Christi’; later on, European anti-semitism saw England do a U-turn and welcome Jews to London. See Britain’s Jews.
Britain’s constitution took mature form in 1689 after the Home Page. Prior to this, we had an absolute monarch making all the laws, and an advisory Parliament. In 1689, Parliament became the law-makers, and the monarch their adviser and moderator. Most European states remained absolute monarchies or republics with little democratic accountability: see William Pitt the Younger on Britain’s ‘temperate zone’.
This ignores various forms of inheritance tax, but in 1731 they constituted little more than the stamp duty on Wills introduced in 1694. Gonzalez puts his finger on three solid reasons why the Industrial Revolution happened mainly in Britain: stable national sovereignty, individual liberty, and private property rights.
Précis
In 1730, Portuguese merchant Manoel Gonzales listed Britain’s advantages as a trading nation. He noted how being an island helped both defence and global trade, but reserved his highest praise for the country’s liberty of conscience, something he found nowhere else in Europe, and he traced England’s prosperity to it. (50 / 60 words)
In 1730, Portuguese merchant Manoel Gonzales listed Britain’s advantages as a trading nation. He noted how being an island helped both defence and global trade, but reserved his highest praise for the country’s liberty of conscience, something he found nowhere else in Europe, and he traced England’s prosperity to it.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 45 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: besides, if, may, must, not, or, unless, who.
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