228 ADAM SMITH. 



for manufacturing certain commodities must always 

 determine where they can be grown or made the 

 cheapest. The inducing men to cultivate one branch 

 rather than another of industry, must therefore prevent 

 their industry from being most profitably employed, 

 and the confining the inhabitants of the country to the 

 commodities produced by its own inhabitants makes 

 them pay dearer for them than they otherwise would 

 do ; and thus lowers the real value of all the other pro- 

 duce of the country. Dr. Smith states the exceptions 

 to which the general rule is liable. They are said by 

 him to be two-fold, but in reality he allows four excep- 

 tions. Defence being more important than wealth, he 

 greatly praises the provisions of the ' Navigation Law,' 

 whereby, in order to increase the amount of British 

 shipping, and to destroy the carrying trade of Holland, 

 none but British ships could be employed either in the 

 colonial, or the coasting, or the carrying trade, or in 

 importing from any foreign country any article not the 

 produce of that country, also prohibiting British ships 

 to import from one country the produce of any other. 

 Again : when any tax is laid upon one article of 

 home-growth or manufacture, he considers it right to 

 lay an equal or countervailing duty upon the importa- 

 tion of the same article. He also allows that when 

 any article has been unnaturally encouraged by former 

 prohibitions, or by the restriction of importation, jus- 

 tice, as well as policy, requires that the prohibition or 

 restriction should only be taken off " slowly, gradually, 

 and after a very long warning." Finally, he conceives 

 it just and right to retaliate on Foreign States, which 

 have restricted the dealing in our commodities by re- 

 straining our people from dealing in theirs, providing 

 we can thus hope to obtain an alteration in their policy. 

 But the consideration how far such experiments are 

 likely in any case to succeed, he says, belongs not so 

 much to the philosopher or the lawgiver as to him 

 whom he is pleased to mention as the " insidious and 



