An Essay Towards Regulating the Trade, and Employing the Poor of This Kingdom Whereunto is Added, an Essay Towards Paying Off the Publick Debts — Edition Insights

Insurance as a Double-Edged Instrument

Cary devotes unusual attention to marine insurance, which he sees as perverted from its original purpose. The first intention, he writes, was to encourage merchants to export more by allowing them to share risk. Instead, speculators without any interest in the ships take out early policies and sell them at a profit, spreading false reports to manipulate rates. The fair trader either cannot find an underwriter or must pay exorbitant premiums.

Worse, some owners deliberately destroy their own ships to collect insurance. Cary notes that existing law—a statute from the first year of Queen Anne—makes such destruction felony only if it prejudices the owner or a merchant loading goods. Since the owners themselves contrive the loss and ensure no other merchants load cargo, the statute is evaded. He proposes that the insured bear a proportion of the loss themselves, which would naturally deter such schemes.

The passage is notable for its moral outrage: Cary calls the practice “abominable” and “a crime so black in itself that it cannot be mentioned without Horror.” He also criticizes underwriters who delay payment even when a loss is fairly proved, forcing the insured to accept less to avoid lawsuits. His remedy is parliamentary action to enforce prompt payment and establish easy arbitration, avoiding “long Issues at Law.”

The Price of Labour and National Competitiveness

Cary addresses a question debated by “Men of good Understanding”: whether high wages for the poor hinder improvements in products and manufactures. He does not dismiss the concern but reframes it within his broader argument that employment itself is the goal. If the poor are idle, they become a charge on the land; if they work, even at high wages, they contribute to the nation's wealth through their labour.

He implies that the real threat is not the cost of labour but the loss of raw materials—especially wool—to foreign competitors. “Nothing but our own Neglects, and ill Managements, can let our Neighbours into our Manufactures,” he writes, and the remedy is “securing our Wool at Home.” This focus on retaining domestic resources recurs throughout the excerpts, suggesting that Cary sees control over materials as more decisive than wage levels.

The argument is characteristically concrete: he does not theorize about supply and demand but points to specific policies—keeping wool in the kingdom, regulating insurance, and employing the poor—as the levers of national prosperity. The high price of labour is a secondary concern, not a primary obstacle.

Six Fundamentals for National Credit

Cary opens his dedication by offering six propositions as “Fundamentals, Necessary, for the better Ordering of our Trade, the Discharging of our Publick Debts, and Supporting the Credit of the Kingdom.” The excerpts do not enumerate all six, but the pattern is clear: each addresses a specific institutional weakness. The first concerns the balance of trade and bullion; others likely cover wool, employment, and debt repayment.

His method is to diagnose a problem—such as the evasion of anti-destruction statutes—and then propose a legislative fix. He does not appeal to abstract principles of justice but to practical consequences: if the insured bear part of the loss, “this would as it were Naturally prevent such Scandalous Practices.” The word “naturally” is telling: Cary believes that well-designed rules align self-interest with public good.

The dedication also reveals his intended audience: the Speaker and members of Parliament, whom he hopes will find the tract “Usefull in your Debates.” He presents himself not as a theorist but as a practical advisor, offering “Sure and Practicable Methods” for discharging debts with “most Ease to the People.” The tone is respectful but urgent, as if the nation's credit hangs on their decisions.

Cary's essay is best read as a policy brief rather than a philosophical treatise. He moves quickly from diagnosis to prescription, and his examples—insurance fraud, wool smuggling, idle poor—are chosen to illustrate systemic failures that legislation could correct. Readers should attend to the specific mechanisms he proposes, such as requiring the insured to bear a share of losses, and consider how they reflect early modern assumptions about the relationship between private vice and public benefit. The second edition's added section on paying off public debts extends the same logic: national credit, like trade, requires regulation to function properly.