The importation of Indian spices, indeed, was admitted to be harmless, and the importation of Indian saltpetre to be necessary.

But the importation of silks and of Bengals, as shawls were then called, was pronounced to be a curse to the country.

The effect of the growing taste for such frippery was that our gold and silver went abroad, and that much excellent English drapery lay in our warehouses till it was devoured by the moths.

Those, it was said, were happy days for the inhabitants both of our pasture lands and of our manufacturing towns, when every gown, every hanging, every bed, was made of materials which our own flocks had furnished to our own looms.

Where were now the brave old hangings of arras which had adorned the walls of lordly mansions in the days of Elizabeth?
And was it not a shame to see a gentleman, whose ancestors had worn nothing but stuffs made by English workmen out of English fleeces, flaunting in a calico shirt and a pair of silk stockings?
Clamours such as these had, a few years before, extorted from Parliament the Act which required that the dead should be wrapped in woollen; and some sanguine clothiers hoped that the legislature would, by excluding all Indian textures from our ports, impose the same necessity on the living.