The South Downs seen from their highest point, Butser Hill near Ramsdean in Hampshire. As he made his way towards London from Falmouth in Cornwall, Gonzales found himself falling in love with the rural landscape of southern England, both for its charm and for its agricultural potential. But it was England’s liberties of movement and conscience that charmed him most, and it was to them, and not to Government policy, that he ascribed the nation’s growing prosperity.
Part 1 of 2
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’. Whether the Continent’s modern counterparts and above all the European Union – an absolute bureaucracy making the laws, and an advisory parliament – have caught up with seventeenth century England is matter for debate; speaking in 1940, Leslie Howard did not think all of them had.
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. Politicians have been as busy as bees trying to take them away ever since.
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. (49 / 60 words)
Part Two
Beef cattle by the River Derwent, near Kirkham Priory in North Yorkshire. Gonzales believed that the high level of meat consumption in Britain was deleterious to health and to trade. On the other hand, meat was not the nation’s worst affliction in his eyes: he reserved that questionable accolade for the legal profession.
THE defects of England may be thus reduced: one thing is very prejudicial to their trade, viz. that they eat a great quantity of meat, and are naturally too much addicted to ease; so that they are obliged to put on board their ships as many more men and provisions as the Dutch. Though the English are very fond of money, and consequently easy to be bribed, yet they despise a moderate gain; whereas the Dutch, being content with a reasonable advantage, get more goods to be transported from one place to another, than the English.*
There is perhaps no country where rheums and coughs are more predominant, especially in winter, which are often attended with ill consequences, if not timely prevented: agues and rheumatisms are also very rife, especially near the sea. Lastly, lawsuits are here a very common distemper, which by the great number of lawyers are often spun to a great length, to the prejudice of good neighbourhood, if not to the utter ruin of families.
Gonzales argues that the English harm their trade by trying to squeeze too much profit out of every transaction, instead of lowering their prices and consequently selling more of their goods. This was a hundred years before the Repeal of the Corn Laws turned Britain towards free markets, and (as Gonzales notes) the self-defeating greed reached into protectionist Westminster itself.
Précis
Having listed Britain’s blessings, Gonzales went on to point out some flaws. He lamented her people’s high consumption of meat, which he believed had a negative impact on their merchant shipping, and drew attention to their various coughs and sniffles. His most scathing criticism was however for excessive litigation, and the lawyers who encouraged it. (55 / 60 words)
