2(58 Colonial Policy : [MARCH, 



at once involved in war, not only with the countries which could directly 

 furnish this colonial produce, but with all others on the face of the globe, to 

 be too extravagant to be one instant admitted by any being capable of the 

 slightest effort of ratiocination. Yet, unless a country were precisely in 

 this state that is, unless there were no single neutral country within the 

 range of her intercourse (and how wide that range might be, who can pro- 

 nounce ?) what should prevent the merchants of each country from 

 making of some neutral one a common market a general bazaar for the 

 purchase and sale of their respective produce ? Nothing, we confess, 

 that we know of; and though it is to an extreme case only that we pro- 

 pound this extreme remedy, we seriously believe that, if occasion should 

 arise to resort to it, the enterprise of merchants would soon prove it to be 

 no chimera. Yet supposing, after all, Great Britain did stand in need of 

 the colonial produce of France, or any other nation with whom we might 

 happen to be at war, and completed the possible reluctance of such 

 nation to furnish her with that produce by shutting her own ports against 

 it, there is a merchant on whom we could still depend for our supply 

 a merchant whom no restrictions can check whose enterprise no Avar- 

 fare can subdue, and who has never failed us in time of need one whom 

 Napoleon, who could dethrone monarchs, could never conquer ; and 

 that merchant is the smuggler. The evidence of this is too notorious to 

 require recapitulation. To have introduced this question to the recollec- 

 tion of our readers will be, we trust, amply sufficient for our purpose. 

 In whatever point of view, therefore, we examine the objection which 

 the contingency of a state of warfare introduces to our general reasoning, 

 we trust we have expressed its emptiness. Though directly tending to 

 introduce that universal peace which is one of the leading features of an 

 Utopia, the principles of economical science will be found true even under 

 a state the most directly opposed to it. The problems of political eco- 

 nomy are all founded upon a principle, which, whether of good or evil 

 tendency, is nevertheless the most acknowledged principle of human 

 action that of self-interest a principle which it requires no Utopian 

 state of things to foster, and which nothing hitherto promulgated has 

 been adequate to check or control. 



Notwithstanding all we have urged, there may, however, be those of 

 our readers who, perhaps, from deep-rooted prejudice, or other causes, 

 may yield, after all, but a reluctant assent to our reasoning. We shall, 

 therefore, go on to exhibit the mischiefs of this system of colonial policy, 

 that, when more completely put into possession of all the items of its 

 debtor and creditor account, a summing-up of the reckoning may better 

 determine whether the balance lie on the side of good or evil. 



Now it is plain that that state of circumstances will be most desirable 

 to a community in which its individuals will, in return for the least 

 amount of labour, be enabled to acquire the greatest quantity of the 

 objects of desire. But this is to be accomplished only by an employment 

 of the resources of the country in the production of those commodities in 

 which, in relation to other countries, it possesses the greatest natural or 

 acquired superiority, either to provide a direct supply of those objects of 

 desire, or to furnish an equivalent for their purchase in foreign states, 

 indued on their parts with the same relative superiority over other coun- 

 tries, and that in the highest extreme. Such a 'distribution, however, of 

 the industry of a community, the interest of its consumers and the enter- 

 prise of its merchants would, in the absence of legislative interference, 



