266 Colonial Policy : [MARCH, 



hibited commodities of France and Germany. But these importations 

 would never have taken place, except for the object of bringing back 

 an equivalent. Their existence, therefore, sufficiently proves the 

 extreme difficulty of securing, under any circumstances, the monopoly 

 of the produce of a colony. " After all the unjustifiable attempts," says 

 Adam Smith, " of every country in Europe to engross to itself the 

 whole advantage of the trade of its own colonies, no country has yet 

 been able to engross to itself any thing but the expense of supporting in 

 time of peace, and of defending in time of war, the oppressive authority 

 which it assumes over them. The inconveniences resulting from the 

 possession of its colonies, every country has engrossed to itself com- 

 pletely ; the advantages resulting from the trade, it has been obliged to 

 share with many other countries." 



But, assuming the very questionable possibility of securing the mono- 

 poly of colonial produce, it is obvious that the market for its disposal 

 must be either confined to an exclusive company, or thrown open to all 

 the markets of the motjier country. What the effect of this policy would 

 be on the colonies themselves, we shall presently have occasion to 

 explain. At present, we have only to deal with its results to the mother 

 country ; and here, to every anticipation of benefit from its adoption, 

 we have the unanswerable objection, that, while the same monopoly 

 which secures to an exclusive company the produce of the colony enables 

 that company to direct its distribution, their own interest would neces- 

 sarily drive them to exact the highest price which was consistent with 

 securing to themselves a sale ; and that, consequently, under the agency 

 of an exclusive company, the consumers would be worse off than a state 

 of free interchange could possibly leave them. In the article of tea 

 alone, it is said, by a writer in a late number of the Edinburgh Review, 

 that we pay the East- India Company 2,000,000/. more every year than 

 we should do if the trade was open. But supposing the markets were 

 open to all the merchants of the mother country, the case would stand 

 precisely thus : The competition of these merchants would, on the one 

 hand, ensure their purchase of the colonial produce at the highest price 

 which could yield them on sale the ordinary profits of capital ; and the 

 competition of colonial merchants, on the other, would reduce that price 

 to the lowest amount, which, after replacement of the cost of production, 

 would return them the usual rate of profit in the colonies. This is, 

 however, precisely the point at which the same causes would have 

 adjusted the cost of purchase in the absence of the agency of restriction. 

 With the exception, then, of the only circumstance of which, from its 

 all but physical impossibility, it is here frivolous to inquire, it is capable 

 of reduction, even to the certainty of a mathematical demonstration, that 

 the agency of dominion which a mother country exercises over her 

 colonies has not the slightest power to render foreign trade more produc- 

 tive to a country than natural circumstances would leave it. 



But it is urged, that, though all we have advanced may be strictly 

 true in an Utopian state of the universe, in which every nation was to be 

 at peace, and all their cabinets governed by the principles of economical 

 science, the liability to which a country is now exposed of having her 

 supplies cut off by war ought to drive her to colonies, as a means of 

 securing her independence. Such an objection, we confess, in a world 

 in which war has been so long the pastime of its rulers, is too serious ta 

 be passed by unnoticed ; but, we apprehend, on examination, it will be 



