POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



55 



M progress of his fortune depends on the progress of his 

 i->my. gale. * 



""V Among the causes which augment this sale, the 

 t IN tin- discovery of such an economy in labour as 

 may enable the manufacturer to sell cheaper than his 

 brethren, and t< get possession of their custom : he 

 will sell more, but they will sell less. The consumers 

 will make a blight saving ; jet, if both are subjects of 

 the same state, the difference in regard to the national 

 interest will not be great. The distress of those pro- 

 ducers, who have lost their custom, and who probably 

 will lose a considerable part of their capital by selling 

 their wares too cheap, and abandoning their for- 

 mer machinery, will perhaps counterbalance the profit 

 of purchasers. 



As policy is wont to comprise the obligation of so- 

 cial duties within the circle of our countrymen, the 

 mutual rivalship of foreign producers has more openly 

 displayed itself. They have striven to exclude each 

 other from the markets, where they came in competi- 

 tion, by selling at a cheaper rate. Every national dis- 

 covery, which allows the producers of one country to 

 sell cheaper than those of other countries, inevitably 

 increases the former's production at the latter's expence ; 

 and the profit of this saving is shared between pro- 

 ducers who extend their market, and consumers who 

 provide for their wants at a smaller expence. Yet if a 

 single manufacturer has succeeded in making this 

 saving, which extends his market; or if the exclusive 

 use of it is secured to him by patent, his countrymen, 

 also manufacturers, against whom he has made this 

 successful competition, must support all the loss of it, 

 whilst himself and the foreign consumer share all the 

 profit. In an age, when communication among differ- 

 ent countries is easy, when all the sciences are applied 

 to all the arts, discoveries are soon divined and copied, 

 and a nation cannot long retain an advantage in manu- 

 facturing which it owes but to a secret; so that the 

 market, extended for a moment by a fall in the price, 

 is very soon shut up; and if the general consumption 

 is not increased, the production is not so either. 



Sale is extended also, and in a more lasting manner, 

 when the cheapness of the thing produced brings it 

 within the reach of a new class of consumers ; a very 

 sensible diminution of the price may often produce 

 this effect. Thus glass windows were at one time 

 confined to palaces ; they are found at the present time 

 in the meanest huts. Consumption is in that case truly 

 increased ; each nation gains doubly by it ; manufac- 

 turers have extended their labour ; the poor have ac- 

 quired a new enjoyment. 



The increase of population, and of national wealth, 

 contributes to extend the market, in a manner still more 

 advantageous. Yet every conceivable increase of po- 

 pulation and of wealth does not of necessity extend the 

 market ; it is only such an increase as attends the in- 

 creased comforts of the most numerous class. When 

 cultivation on the great scale has succeeded cultiva- 

 tion on the small, more capital is perhaps absorbed by 

 land and reproduced by it ; more wealth than former- 

 ly may be diffused among the whole mass of agricul- 

 turists, but the consumption of one rich farmer's family, 

 united to that of fifty families of miserable hinds, is 



not so valuable for the nation, at that of fifty families Polltlral 

 of peasants, no one of which was rich, but none de- Kronutny. 

 prived of an honest competence. So also in town*, "*~ v ~" 1 

 the consumption of a manufacturer worth a million, 

 under whose orders are employed a thousand work- 

 men reduced to the bare necessaries of life, is not o 

 advantageous for the nation, as that of a hundred 

 manufacturers far less rich, who employ each but ten 

 workmen far less poor. It is very true, that len thou- 

 sand pounds of income, whether they belong to a 

 single man, or to a hundred, are all equally destined 

 for consumption, but this consumption is not of the 

 same nature. A man, however rich, cannot employ 

 for his use an infinitely greater number of article* 

 than a poor man, but he employs articles infinitely 

 better ; he requires work far better finished, material* 

 far more precious, and brought from a far greater di- 

 tance. It is he who especially encourages the perfec- 

 tion of certain workmen, that finish a small number of 

 objects with extreme skill ; it is he who pays them an 

 exorbitant wage. It is he also that especially reward* 

 Mich workmen as we have named unproductive, be- 

 cause they procure for him nothing but fugitive en- 

 joyments, which can never by accumulation form 

 part of the national wealth ; and whilst the c-ff -ct of 

 increasing capital is generally to concentrate labour in 

 very large manufactories, the effect of great opulence is 

 almost entirely to exclude the produce of tho?e large 

 manufactories from the consumption of the opult 

 man. The diffusion of wealth, therefore, still more 

 than its accumulation, truly constitutes national pros- 

 perity, because it keeps up the kind of consumption 

 most favourable for national reproduction. 



The manufacturer's market may, in the last place* 

 be extended, by what forms the noblest wish of a states- 

 man, the progress of civilization, comfort, security, 

 and happiness, among barbarous nations. Europe has 

 arrived at such a point, that in all its parts there is to 

 be found an industry, a quantity of fabrication, superior 

 to its wants ; but if false policy did not incessantly in- 

 duce us to arrest the progress of civilization among our 

 neighbours ; if Egypt had been left in hands of a 

 people requiring the arts of Europe ; if Turkey were 

 extricated from the oppression under which it groans ; 

 if our victories over the inhabitants of Barbary had 

 been profitably employed in giving back the coasts of 

 Africa to social life; if Spain had not again been yield- 

 ed to a despotism which destroys and ruins her po. 

 pulation ; if the independents of America were protect- 

 ed, so that they might be allowed to enjoy the advantage* 

 which nature offers them ; if the Hindoos, subject to Eu- 

 rope, wire amalgamated with Europeans; if Franks were 

 encouraged to settle among them, in place of being 

 repelled, consumption would increase in these different 

 countries, rapidly enough to employ all this Supera- 

 bundant labour, which Europe at present knows not 

 how to dispose of, and to terminate this distress in 

 which the poor are plunged. 



The more superior the buyer's price is to the seller's, 

 the more profit does trade give to be shared among 

 the trader and all those whom he employs in the 

 transport and distribution of his goods; the manu- 

 facturer, and all those whom he employs in the pro* 



Since all the talent of the merchant essentially tends to increase his sale ; since the main object of all mercantile policy is the national 

 sale ; since ercry commercial calamity is explained by the diminution of sale, what is to be thought of that doctrine which reduces poli- 

 tical science to the forming of a greater and greater number of producers more and more active, and which supposes that, by ' 

 augmenting production, sale will also be indefinitely augmented 'i 



