108 



not help anyone here. Smith who walks 

 about the market with his breeches pockets full of 

 sound principles as they are called, will then be 

 no better off than his neighbour Jones, who flings 

 the said principles overboard at once : and a few 

 months later or after supplies in stock have been 

 worked off while Jones, if he has made good use 

 of the interval, to seek, or create by his own exer- 

 tions, a new source of supply, may possibly be 

 floating buoyantly ou the surface, Smith will have 

 sunk never to rise again. And it is for the purpose 

 of averting these calamities, which, when they be- 

 fall us, no Government aid. no humau knowledge 

 or skill will suffice to ward off, that wise Nations 

 avoid being dependent on any one foreign Country 

 for supplies necessary to the well being of any large 

 body of their people. It seems almost ludicrous 

 to be talking ' first principles/ at this hour of the 

 day; but if people will preach, and act, as if they 

 supposed the pharmacopoeia of Economic Science, 

 contained remedies for all the ills that trade is heir 

 to, and pertinaciously ignore the fact, that the 

 markets of the commercial world are subject to 

 perturbations altogether outside and beyond the 

 control of its laws, there is no help for it. 



The Cotton Spinners were quite right when 

 they asserted that the Cotton Merchant should no 

 more grow his own cotton, than the Miller should 

 grow his own wheat. According to universal 



