(^234) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
[dorures], its silks, its linens; because, since the English don't make these
things, they'd go buy them in China and the East, and while these islanders
got rich, indeed became the strongest European nation, France would
grow weak.^3
Perfidious Albion as superpower. To this day, and in spite of two
world wars, the average Frenchman thinks of Britain as his country's
chief rival and adversary in Europe. One does not forget Agincourt and
Joan of Arc that quickly.
These animadversions, of course, were unconscious salutes to Eng
lish success. The French, as we have seen, were particularly vexed to
watch the British pull ahead. They viewed economic growth and the
accumulation of wealth as the keys to political power, and they cor-
recdy associated the succession of British victories in European and
overseas combat with the resources the British could mobilize: the nu
merous ships (over a hundred thousand of theirs, only twenty thousand
of ours), the countiess seamen. Some French even imagined that Eng
land was an island without an interior, all coasts and harbors, a land
without cultivators, composed entirely of sailors and city dwellers. Oth
ers, like Boisguillebert, were overawed by British wealth, the revenues
of the crown, the ability to borrow both at home and abroad.
In all this the link to trade was self-evident; Voltaire expressed it
with characteristic abandon:
What has made England powerful is the fact that from the time of Eliz
abeth, all parties have agreed on the necessity of favoring commerce. The
same parliament that had the king beheaded was busy with overseas trad
ing posts as though nothing were happening. The blood of Charles I was
still steaming when this parliament, composed almost entirely of fanatics,
passed the Navigation Act of 1650.^4
Contrary to French adage, to understand is not necessarily to for
give. English commercial protectionism, and even more English suc
cess, aroused more resentment than admiration. In 1698, Louis XIV
gave advice to his ambassador in London: "Nowhere in the world are
the rules of Equality, so right and necessary for trade, more flouted
than in England."^5 Other Frenchmen felt the same. One even com
plained that, so far did the British push their contempt for fair play, they
tried to stop foreigners from smuggling in contraband.^6
In general, the critical foreigner condemned the English for their
greed and materialism. "The notorious avarice of the Dutchman,"
nora
(Nora)
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