12

THE EFFECTS OF

CHAP. XX.

gradual advance to take place between the com-mencement and the completion of a piece of cloth ;but in that day, when machinery was unknown,and the division of labour was not carried to thepresent minute extent, the making a piece of clothoccupied more months than it does now days. Atthis slow rate the general increase of price of allcommodities would insure a profit by the delay, inaddition to the regular profit on the manufacture.

The merchants, whether wholesale or retail,whether confined to the home or extended to theforeign trade, must have benefited in proportionto the stock of goods they kept in their warehousesand their shops. The dealer in a rising articlenecessarily gets money, because the rise, whateverit may be, comes in addition to the regular profitsof his trade.

The navigation of the European world was muchextended in this period, and though it was buttrifling compared with the extent to which it hasbeen since carried, yet, as far as it had proceeded,it increased the wealth of the merchant adventurerswho engaged in it, and added additional and im-portant members to that class of society.

The effect of this prosperous state of the ope-rative cultivators, of the manufacturers, and of themerchants and retail traders, has been prolongedthrough more than three centuries, and has givento European society in general, but to that ofEngland more especially, a form utterly unknown