only to 58,884l.; and in that with Sweden, our imports to 212,094l., and our exports only to 57,555l.[1] These figures may at any rate be taken as showing the extent of our commercial intercourse at this time with the countries in question.
Down to this, and indeed to a much later date, our chief article of produce and export continued, as of old, to be our woollens. This important manufacture was the subject of various legislative regulations in the reign of William. Immediately after the Revolution an act was passed, renewing and strengthening the former laws against the exportation of the raw material, which, the preamble alleges, had of late years been extensively violated, "through the remissness and negligence of officers and others."[2] In 1698, however, we find the parliament again complaining that, nevertheless, the sending of the commodity abroad was still "notoriously continued, to the great prejudice and discouragement of the woollen trade and manufacture of England."[3] The next year the jealousy with which this great staple was watched over was strikingly evinced by the passing of an act which, after declaring that "the wool and the woollen manufactures of cloth, serge, baise, kerseys, and other stuffs made or mixed with wool, are the greatest and most profitable commodities of this kingdom, on which the value of lands and the trade of the nation do chiefly depend," proceeds to state, that "great quantities of the like manufactures have of late been made and are daily increasing in the kingdom of Ireland and in the English plantations in America, and are exported from thence to foreign markets heretofore supplied from England, which will inevitably sink the value of lands, and tend to the ruin of the trade and the woollen manufactures of this realm;" and thereupon strictly prohibits the exports in future both of wool and of woollen goods to any part of the world except to England, from either
