So high a price demonstrated the feebleness of these
beginnings of our inland intercourse. In my time, one of the longest and
sharpest contests I remember in your House, and which rather resembled a
violent contention amongst national parties than a local dispute, was,
as well as I can recollect, to hold the price up to threepence. Even
this, which a very scanty justice to the proprietors required, was done
with infinite difficulty. As to private credit, there were not, as I
believe, twelve bankers' shops at that time out of London. In this their
number, when I first saw the country, I cannot be quite exact; but
certainly those machines of domestic credit were then very few. They are
now in almost every market-town: and this circumstance (whether the
thing be carried to an excess or not) demonstrates the astonishing
increase of private confidence, of general circulation, and of internal
commerce,--an increase out of all proportion to the growth of the
foreign trade. Our naval strength in the time of King William's war was
nearly matched by that of France; and though conjoined with Holland,
then a maritime power hardly inferior to our own, even with that force
we were not always victorious. Though finally superior, the allied
fleets experienced many unpleasant reverses on their own element. In two
years three thousand vessels were taken from the English trade. On the
Continent we lost almost every battle we fought.
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