The Problem of Internal Trade

Abstract

FEW political economists before Daniel Defoe, writing at the close of our period, acknowledged the macroeconomic significance of internal trade in England. Contemporary economic literature tended to be concerned with matters of international trade or with the currency issues related to it. Politicians and commentators were often prepared to indict the middleman or the level of domestic consumption for the felony of trade depression, but few seem to have accepted that the domestic trades performed valuable and even vital economic functions. Little wonder, therefore, that Defoe felt the need to write of the home trades in somewhat evangelical fashion [6].