Bar-iron: North American colonies Reflections on the importation of bar-iron, from our own colonies of North-America London 1757
[Bar-iron: North American colonies.] Reflections on the importation of bar-iron, from our own colonies of North-America. In answer to a late pamphlet on that subject. Humbly submitted to the consideration of the Honourable the House of Commons, March 14, 1757. N.p. (London): n.d. (1757). 23 pp. 8vo, disbound. First edition. A reply to a pamphlet printed in 1756 called The Case of the Importation of Bar-Iron, from our own Colonies of North America, in which it was argued that there should be no duty on the import of iron into Great Britain, and in which domestic iron manufacturers were "stigmatized with the opprobrious name of monopolizers." The anonymous author of this response suggests that the elimination of such a duty, then under consideration by Parliament, would bring about the ruin of an important domestic industry. Also included are remarks on the iron of Sweden and Russia, and the unfair advantage conferred upon colonial manufacturers by the use of Negro laborers. There is an anecdote as well about the author having bought, in 1729, a beaver hat from a Rhode Island trader in Antigua, for 13s 6d: "At my return the year following, I shew'd the same hat to a noted maker in London, who assur'd me, that he could not afford to make one of equal goodness with mine for 30s. . .. . Now if the American manufacturer of hats, had been permitted to have imported his hats duty free to this island, I leave this writer to judge, whether we should have had a hat-maker left in England, notwithstanding the greater expence of freight from Rhode Island to Britain than to Antigua. Negroes do all the laborious work in America." A fine copy of a scarce pamphlet. Sabin 68701; Kress 4094; Higgs 1453.
£500
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