WEALTH OF NATIONS. 233 



within the exception of the last subdivison. But real 

 bounties are, in every case, objectionable ; they are 

 liable to the general objection urged against encourag- 

 ing one branch of industry, or one employment of 

 capital, by restricting importation ; they force labour 

 and capital into employments they would not naturally 

 seek, and therefore would not advantageously have. 

 But they are liable to the still greater objection, that 

 the giving them always assumes the employment of 

 capital to be prejudicial, the trade to be a losing one, 

 else there could be no reason whatever for giving them ; 

 and thus we pay more for driving a losing trade, and 

 wisely make a present to foreigners at the expense of 

 our own people, for the purpose of increasing the 

 amount of the specie which we are to gain from those 

 foreigners. Dr. Smith examines particularly the two 

 most celebrated cases of bounty ; first, that on exported 

 corn, which he shows to have both raised its price to 

 the public at the public expense to have prevented 

 the plenty of one year from providing for the want 

 of another to have had no effect in encouraging 

 tillage, because it only gave the grower a nominal 

 benefit to have raised the money price of our goods 

 in the home market, and lowered their price abroad 

 to have enabled foreigners to eat of corn somewhat 

 cheaper than we do ourselves. The other bounty dis- 

 cussed is that in the herring and whale fisheries ; in 

 which he clearly shows the Government to have been 

 grievously imposed upon by the great authors of all 

 such measures the members of the commercial in- 

 terest, whom he never spares in his sharp and severe 

 censures. 



To this subdivision is naturally enough added a 

 dissertation called, somewhat inaccurately, a ' Digres- 

 sion on the Corn Trade and Corn Laws,' the bounty 

 having been already touched upon. There are four 

 trades engaged in this line of business those of the 

 inland dealer, the importer, the exporter, and the 



