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Page:Craik History of British Commerce Vol 2.djvu/188

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186
HISTORY OF

ever, they gradually improved: in 1723 they were 7,395,908l.; and their average annual amount for the three years 1726, 1727, and 1728 was 7,891,739l. The amount of shipping cleared outwards in each year corresponded generally with these valuations of the cargoes: in 1714 it was 478,793 tons (of which 33,950 were foreign); in 1715, 425,900 tons (of which 19,508 were foreign); in 1716, 456,309 tons (of which 17,493 were foreign); in 1718, 444,771 tons (of which 16,809 were foreign); in 1723, 419,683 tons (of which 27,040 were foreign); and on the average of the three years from 1726 to 1728 inclusive, 456,483 tons (of which 23,651 were foreign).[1] In connexion with the subject of the mercantile shipping, we may note here that the royal navy, which at the end of the reign of Anne is stated to have amounted to 167,171 tons, was reduced in 1721, according to a writer of the day, to 158,233,[2] but had increased again at the death of George II. to 170,860 tons.[3]

Among the minor events, or arrangements, by which our trade and manufactures were affected in the reign of George II., may be mentioned the following:—In 1715 a treaty of commerce was made with Spain, by which it was stipulated that British subjects were to pay no higher duties in the Spanish ports than they paid in the reign of the Spanish king Charles II. (that is, than they paid before the commencement of the late war); that they should nowhere pay any higher or other duties than were paid by the subjects of his Catholic majesty in the same places; and that the subjects of both kingdoms should be mutually treated in each on the footing of the most favoured nations. In 1717 the duty on the export of

  1. ↑ Chalmers, Estimate, 104, 105.
  2. ↑ Survey of Trade, by William Wood (afterwards Secretary to the Commissioners of the Customs), p. 15. Wood dedicates his book to George I.; and his object is to prove the progress that the navy, as well as all the other elements of the national power and prosperity, had made since the Revolution.
  3. ↑ Account laid before House of Commons in 1791.
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