of a new Empire instead of the preservation of an old one. In so doing he had established a reputation, and a claim to remembrance by his countrymen, second only to that of Washington. While he was thus engaged he had of necessity been separated from his friend, who still continued to work for unity of the English race, and on occasions-especially in 1774 when he converted Lord North to his view of things-came very near attaining his object. That they had been separated by circumstances during the ten years 1773-1783, that the complete success of the one had meant the equally complete failure of the other, made no difference at the end to the perfect understanding between them. This letter goes on to say to Franklin :

Whatever my habitual love to my native country was I always had a feeling for the welfare of the English nation which superseded all local considerations. . . . Adieu, my dear friend. . . . You are going to a new world formed to exhibit a scene which the old world never yet saw. You leave me here in the old world which, like myself, begins to feel as Asia hath felt-that it is wearing out apace. We shall never meet again on this earth, but there is another world where we shall meet and where we shall be understood; and those of us who shall not have our reward here will have it in all fulness there.1

It may be agreed that the man who, misunderstood and unrewarded himself, could thus write what was intended only for the eye of his brilliantly successful friend knew how to bear adversity-and how we each of us do that is the test of our mettle. We hear no more of Pownall through the autumn of 1785; he was probably still abroad then and for most, if not all, of 1786. In that year only two small works of his appeared. They dealt with a scheme for University scholarships in art and with the Jutae or Viti, a tribe of the Teutons.

1787

In 1787 Pownall published

HYDRAULIC AND NAUTICAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE CURRENTS OF THE ATLANTIC.

This had some footnotes which the author says were added by Franklin when he looked it over with him at 1 Works of Franklin, 1843, Jared Sparks, x. 342.

Passy on October 7, 1784. It has a chart of the Atlantic with the American and European coasts, and consists of seventeen large quarto pages published by R. Sayer. The contents are said to be based on information given by English naval officers in whose company Pownall had made several Atlantic voyages, and on what he had heard when in Boston as a young man from the masters of colonial merchantmen. Of all he had gathered in this way he had taken careful notes, of which this is the result, but it is of too technical a nature to be entered into here; and what hints it gives as to the use by sailing ships of Atlantic currents is out of date now that steamers have been introduced.

His other work of 1787 was on an entirely different subject-some Roman pottery at Sandy in Bedfordshire and at Lincoln; into that topic also we need not enter.

While on the Continent in 1785-1786 Pownall had shewn his usual industry in collecting facts on which to base conclusions, and those relating to the manufacture of woollen goods had received his particular attention. The result appeared in a book of 124 octavo pages published by Debrett in October 1787 with the title of

LIVE AND LET LIVE.

The Preface, dated April 12, says it is not the habit of the author to abstain from giving his name, but he does so when occasion requires. In this case he thinks it advisable not to give it, because he desires to discuss impartially the relations of the farmer or grazier who produced the wool with the manufacturer who worked it up. If he gave his name it would be recognised by the former class as that of one who had been at some pains to write from France giving information to the English manufacturers as to foreign methods. For this he had received many letters of thanks and addresses "which he never published in newspapers, as he is no candidate for that sort of fame." But as he had thus become known to men on one side of the question, he did not wish to be supposed to be holding a brief for them. He had sent to the English manufacturing firms samples of the wools grown and the cloth woven in France, the weight of the fleece as it left the sheep, and again after washing; what weight of cloth came from it, what the

rate of wages was in the mills, and what it cost the weaver to live.

But while he had done all this for the townsman who manufactured the wool, his own natural interests as a landowner were with the countryman who kept the sheep from which it came. He observed that there was something wrong in the condition of the trade, for wool had fallen enormously in value while the price of cloth had risen. This meant that the manufacturers were thriving at the expense of the farmer who had looked to his sheep to pay a large proportion of his rent at shearing time; now they ceased to do so, fewer sheep were kept, with the result that the price of mutton had doubled and was carrying that of other food up with it. This unseen distribution of profits had, he said, been described by Adam Smith as due to the fact that

the manufacturer hath managed to get regulations established by which wool from other countries, from lands not taxed, shall be brought into competition in the English market against the English wool, locked up by a monopoly and lying under a load of taxes. to this oppressive rival is the English wool subjugated.

In the opinion that the English agriculturist had an equal right to the manufacturer and a superior right to the foreigner for the consideration of his Government to whom he paid heavy taxes, Pownall entirely agreed with Adam Smith. He compares the whole body, politic and economical, to a tree of which the "landworker" is the root and the origin, and the trade and commerce the branches. Those branches Government might trim and prune by legislation, but there was an end to all that sprang from agriculture if that were damaged. The statesman's duty, he said, was to hold the balance even between producer and manufacturer in the first instance, and afterwards to secure advantages to our own manufacturers against those of other countries. To attend only to the second of those obligations while ignoring the first was fatal to the best interests of the community. It was favouring one part at the expense of another, and in the long run destructive to the whole, for the interests of each class were bound up with that of every other within the realm.' The foundation of the

1 While Pownall in 1787 looked at both sides of the question Cobden looked only at the one in which he was interested.

wool trade is here ascribed to Edward III. who, by prohibiting the export to Flanders of the English raw material-the best to be had-brought the Flemings over to this country, where their art was learnt from them and practised by our own people. The Sovereigns who succeeded him had encouraged the industry by fixing a time limit so arranged that no wool could be sold abroad till some months after shearing time. During these months the English purchaser could obtain what he required; when he was supplied what remained was surplus which the foreign buyer was allowed to purchase. But this practice had been pushed too far. It had become the law that no wool at all should be exported, and thus the farmer was left with the surplus on his hands, entirely at the mercy of the manufacturer who could beat down price as much as he chose. This was the farmer's grievance, a very real one in the opinion of Pownall, who here argues at length for its removal by returning to the former system of giving the English buyer an advantage in the form of some months' start over his foreign rival in the market, but of admitting the latter also as a customer to the English farmer, who would thus be able to get a fair price from abroad if he could not get it at home.

Bound with the copy of this work in the Reading Room of the British Museum is a pamphlet of February 11, 1788, evidently by some Norfolk man for it was published at Norwich. He recognises, as it is easy to do from some passages it contains, who wrote the first work, and addresses this second one to Governor Pownall of whom he says:

The liberal conduct for which you are distinguished, the interest which the situation of some of your property gives you in the subject of the following sheets, and your well-known pursuit of such inquiries as are nearly connected with the good of the community which, in times of political danger, you have been forward to protect,

had caused him to study this subject.

CHAPTER XIV

LITERATURE-LAST YEARS-DEATH

1788-1805

DURING his long stay in France Pownall had not only studied the wool industry, but he had been busy investigating the relics of Roman rule in that country. In 1788 John Nichols of Red Lion Passage in Fleet Street published for him a book of 209 quarto pages

NOTICES AND DESCRIPTIONS OF THE PROVINCIA
ROMANA OF GAUL1

In the preliminary remarks the provinces of Provence, Languedoc, and Dauphine are described as being at that time-just before the French Revolution-but the débris of what they had been under the Romans. With the exception of one or two great cities the country had gone to rack and ruin, the ancient sources of wealth had been neglected, but such was the fertility of the land that there was still a surplus of provisions and wines to export. Fowls and fish were difficult to obtain. "I must in this place observe that this circumstance always marks an inferiority of land culture." He speaks of the inhabitants as living in a country full of the stupendous and magnificent remains of ancient edifices, much above the level they could aspire to emulate or keep up. Some of these, the Basilica and the Mausoleum at Vienne, the Temple, the Amphitheatre, and the Pont de Garde at Nîmes, the Triumphal Arch at Orange, he had found in an almost

1 The Gentleman's Magazine of 1808 mentions a great fire on February 2 of that year in Red Lion Passage, which destroyed Nichol's premises and a great quantity of valuable books, among them the unsold copies of this work and of the Antiquarian Romance, which Pownall wrote in 1795.