the manufacture of all sorts of stuffs, silk, hair, gold, and silver; Haerlem, linen, mixed stuffs, and flowers; Delft, beer and earthen ware; Swaardam, ship building; Sluys, herring fishery; Friezeland, the Greenland trade; and Amsterdam, the East India, Spanish, and Mediterranean trade.  Sir W. Temple mentions other two causes, the great application of the whole province to the fishing trade, and the mighty advance the Dutch made towards engrossing the whole commerce of the East Indies.  “The stock of this trade,” he observes, “besides what it turns to in France, Spain, Italy, the Straits, and Germany, makes them so great masters in the trade of the northern parts of Europe, as Muscovy, Poland, Pomerania, and all the Baltic, where the spices, that are an Indian drug and European luxury, command all the commodities of those countries which are so necessary to life, as their corn; and to navigation, as hemp, pitch, masts, planks, and iron.”

The next question that Sir William Temple discusses is, what are the causes which made the trade of Holland enrich it? for, as he remarks, “it is no constant rule that trade makes riches.  The only and certain scale of riches arising from trade in a nation is, the proportion of what is exported for the consumption of others, to what is imported for their own.  The true ground of this proportion lies in the general industry and parsimony of a people, or in the contrary of both.”  But the Dutch being industrious, and consequently producing much,—­and parsimonious, and consequently consuming little, have much left for exportation.  Hence, never any country traded so much and consumed so little.  “They buy infinitely, but it is to sell again.  They are the great masters of the Indian spices, and of the Persian silks, but wear plain woollen, and feed upon their own fish and roots.  Nay, they sell the finest of their own cloth to France, and buy coarse out of England for their own wear.  They send abroad the best of their own butter into all parts, and buy the cheapest out of Ireland or the north of England for their own use.  In short, they furnish infinite luxury which they never practise, and traffic in pleasures which they never taste.”  “The whole body of the civil magistrates, the merchants, the rich traders, citizens, seamen and boors in general, never change the fashion of their cloaths; so that men leave off their cloaths only because they are worn out, and not because they are out of fashion.  Their great consumption is French wine and brandy; but what they spend in wine they save in corn, to make other drinks, which is brought from foreign parts.  Thus it happens, that much going constantly out, either in commodity or in the labour of seafaring men, and little coming in to be consumed at home, the rest returns in coin, and fills the country to that degree, that more silver is seen in Holland, among the common hands and purses, than brass either in Spain or in France; though one be so rich in the best native commodities, and the other drain all the treasures of the West Indies.” (Sir W. Temple’s Observations on the Netherlands, Chapter VI.)