[SOAP]

Memorial concerning the Difference of the Custom and Duties on Sope Imported, and the Duties Imposed on that made in Great Britain [caption title].

[London]: 1715. 4pp., including printed docket title on p.4. Disbound. Small folio. Early folds and early stab holes in left margin. Trimmed close, with loss to docket title. Some foxing.

England Needs Soap

A rare and detailed petition to Parliament charging that the prohibitively high tariff on imported soap has created a black market for soap imports that is driving domestic soap manufacturers out of business. The decline in domestic soap manufacture, the authors argue, is also having detrimental effects on the commerce and industries it supports, including "the Trades to Russia and the Baltick for Pot-ashes and Clapboards, the Straits for Oyl, New England and Newfoundland for Whale and other Fish Train, and the Fishery on the Coast of the Kingdom...which yields large Quantities of Fish-Oyl." The document also contains an interesting economic history of the soap trade between England and Scotland before unification. The petition is among the earliest examples of commercial lobbying literature, which first began proliferating in the lobby of the House of Commons around the time of the accession of King George I and the British general election of 1715. Rare, with only one recorded copy, at the Goldsmiths' Library at the University of London.

Goldsmiths 5239; Hanson 2167.

Item #21212

Price: $675.00