172 THE COMPANY AND THE KING he took a bolder stand. The Company declared that the export of bullion to buy Indian wares, which it resold to foreign nations at a great profit, was a good employment for the national treasure It declared that, since England had neither gold nor silver, she could acquire bullion only " by making our commodities which are exported, to overbalance in value the foreign wares which we consume." " It is not . . . the keeping of our money in the kingdom which makes a quick and ample trade, but the necessity and use of our wares in foreign countries, and our want of their commodities which causeth the vent and consumption on all sides." " For," as Mun privately wrote, "if we only be- hold the actions of the husbandman in the seed-time when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we will rather accompt him a madman than a hus- bandman; but when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we find the worth and plentiful encrease of his actions." This early enunciation of the Mercantile System, which anticipated Colbert's acceptance of it by a quar- ter of a century, fell flat in 1628. Parliament was too busy with the Petition of Rights to spare time for the complaints of the Company. But even if it had had the leisure, it was too deeply ingrained with the old prejudice against exporting bullion, to be enticed by new-fangled economics. Four years previously, on a motion " to search the East India ships for money," the Company's friends were answered by tumultuous cries of " stay the money that they send out of the
