(2) Considerations of the Fatal Effects to a Trading Nation of the Excess of Public Charity (London, 1763), 25, quoted in Furniss, Position of the Laborer, 148.
(3) N. H. Owen, `Thomas Wimbledon’s Sermon: “Redde Racionem Villicacionis Tue”‘, Mediaeval Studies, xxviii (1966), 179.
(4) Henry Fielding, An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (London, 1751), 7.
(5) John Hatcher, `English Serfdom and Villeinage: Towards a Reassessment’, Past and Present, no. 90 (Feb. 1981); Paul Slack, The English Poor Law, 1531-1782 (London, 1990), 12-14.
(6) John Hatcher, `England in the Aftermath of the Black Death’, Past and Present, no. 144 (Aug. 1994).
(7) For a recent assessment, see E. Screpanti and S. Zamagni, An Outline of the History of Economic Thought (Oxford, 1995), ch. 1. For a brief taste of the abundant literature, see, for example, Eli F. Heckscher, Mercantilism, 2 vols. (London, 1934); W. E. Minchinton (ed.), Mercantilism: System or Expediency? (Lexington, 1969); D. C. Coleman (ed.), Revisions in Mercantilism (London, 1969); A. W. Coats, `In Defence of Eli Heckscher and the Idea of Mercantilism’, Scandinavian Econ. Hist. Rev., v (1957); J. O. Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology in Seventeenth-Gentury England (Princeton, 1978); D. C. Coleman, `Mercantilism Revisited’, Hist. Jl, xxiii (1980).
(8) Heckscher, Mercantilism, 158; Coleman, `Labour in the English Economy of the Seventeenth Century’, 305-6; Appleby, Economic Thought and Ideology, 134-5.
(9) Classic accounts, written from different perspectives, are contained in Furniss, Position of the Laborer, esp. 117-56; Heckscher, Mercantilism, esp. 157-72.
(10) Sir William Temple, Observations on the United Provinces of the Netherlands (London, 1673), 187.
(11) There is an abundant literature on attitudes to labour and wages in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in addition to that cited in nn. 1 and 7 above, of which the following is a small selection: T. E. Gregory, `The Economics of Employment in England, 1660-1713′, Economica, i (1921); Dorothy Marshall, The English Poor in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Social and Administrative History (London, 1926; repr. 1969), 15-56; A. W. Coats, `Changing Attitudes to Labour in the Mid-Eighteenth Century’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xi (1958); also his `Economic Thought and Poor Law Policy in the Eighteenth Century’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xiii (1960-1); R. C. Wiles, `The Theory of Wages in Later English Mercantilism’, Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxi (1968); P. Earl, The World of Defoe (London, 1976), 107-57.
12) For particularly perceptive and wide-ranging discussions of the existence and nature of `leisure preference’ in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England, see Peter Mathias, `Leisure and Wages in Theory and Practice’, in his The Transformation of England: Essays in the Economic and Social History of England in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1979); see also his `Time for Work and Time for Play: Relations between Work and Leisure in the Early Modern Period’, Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozialund Wirtschaftsgeschichte, lxxxi (1994); E. P. Thompson, `Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, Past and Present, no. 38 (Dec. 1967); also his `The Patricians and the Plebs’, in E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London, 1993).
(13) Thomas Manley, Usurie at Six Per Cent (London, 1669), 19; Henry Pollexfen, A Discourse of Trade (London, 1697), 47; Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Publick Virtues, ed. F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1924), i, 509.
(14) Sir Josiah Child, A New Discourse of Trade (London, 1694), 15, 16.
(15) John Law, Proposals and Reasons for Constituting a Council of Trade (Edinburgh, 1701), 85.
(16) Sir William Petty, Political Arithmetic (1690), in Economic Writings of Sir William Petty, ed. Hull, i, 274. Since good harvests and cheap food tended to boost the demand for manufactures, employers would be seeking to increase their work-forces at just that time when the work effort of labourers and artisans was tending to decline, and thus a two-fold upward pressure would be exerted on wages.
(17) Nathaniel Forster, Enquiry into the Causes of the Present High Price of Provisions (London, 1767), 41. The frequency and severity of such criticisms increased over time, in keeping with improvements in real earnings and a broadening of consumption.
(18) Sir Josiah Tucker, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages with Regard to Trade, 2nd edn (London, 1750), 42.
(19) Heckscher, Mercantilism, 165-6.
(20) Furniss, Position of the Laborer, 118.
(21) E. J. Berg, `Backward Sloping Labor Supply Functions in Dual Economies: The African Case’, Quart. Jl Econ., lxxv (1961), provides a useful guide to the anthropological literature on `leisure preference’ as well as an illuminating analysis of the supply of casual labour in Sub-Saharan Africa. For additional examples, ranging from the Indians in upper New York State in 1749 to Mexican miners in the twentieth century, see Mathias, `Leisure and Wages in Theory and Practice’, 151-4; Thompson, `Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism’, 90-4.
(22) E. W. Gilboy, Wages in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, Mass., 1936), 21.
(23) Jan de Vries, `Between Purchasing Power and the World of Goods: Understanding the Household Economy in Early Modern Europe’, in John Brewer and Roy Porter (eds.), Consumption and the World of Goods (London, 1993), 12 n. 81.
(24) It is an almost impossible task to present an adequate summary of the miscellaneous views expressed in the vast outpouring of writings and speeches on these matters, even over a brief period of time. Not only was there rarely a consensus, individuals frequently changed their opinons as well as the focus of their arguments as they engaged in debate. Moreover, second-rate opinions were not necessarily less influential than first-rate, and any attempt at simplification by concentration on prescient elements in texts written by major figures is bound to obscure the abundant continuities and contradictions in both the greater and the lesser literature, and the tensions which were frequently exhibited within them between conceptions of future promise and pragmatic acknowledgments of present reality.
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