12,185 tuns of Portuguese; but the next year, when the prohibition was taken off, 12,760 tuns of French wines were imported, and of Portuguese only 289.[1] And it is admitted that even at the time when the prohibition was in force great quantities of French wines were every year imported under the names of Spanish and Portuguese, by the direction of the court and the connivance of the Custom-house officers.[2] The British Merchant, while he laments and condemns, very frankly admits, not only the general preference of his countrymen for French wines, but even the reasonableness of this preference as a mere matter of taste. "Not to insist," he says, glancing at the threatened infliction of the Utrecht Treaty of Commerce, "upon the general inclination towards everything that is French, these wines will be the cheapest; but they are so preferable in themselves, that I believe at a third-part greater price they would be the common draught in England.[3]
From an account of tho manufacture of paper at this date, both in France and in England, we abstract the following details:—"There are seven provinces in France where the manufacture of paper is settled, viz., Champaigne, Normandy, Britany, Angoumois, Perigord, Limousin, and Auvergne; the three last provinces are full of large forests of chestnut trees, and abound so much in that kind of fruit, that the common people have no other food all the year round, and no other drink but water; so that they can afford their work very cheap, and do it for next to nothing, except some of the upper workmen, who earn a small salary by the week. This is so true that considerable parcels of paper were imported lately from thence, although the duties paid here exceed one hundred per cent, on the first cost." To the objection made by De Foe, that a Frenchman living "on an onion and a draught of water, a bunch of grapes, and a piece of bread" never could do such a day's work—could do so much in a day, and that much so well,—as an Englishman who had his beef and his pudding, our author
- ↑ British Merchant, i. 302[deeplink needed]
- ↑ Id. pp. 307, &c.
- ↑ Id. p. 319.
