WEALTH OF NATIONS. 163 



made of, or with, articles subject to a tax as refined 

 sugar made of taxed raw sugar, or gunpowder made of 

 saltpetre that has paid duty. These apparent bounties 

 are, in reality, drawbacks, and fall within the exception 

 of the last subdivision. But real bounties are, in every 

 case, objectionable; they are liable to the general objec- 

 tion urged against encouraging 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 advan- 

 tageously 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 discussed 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 



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