162 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
carried on in Great Britain ; and from the abundance of iron, tin and copper 
ores in this country, and our inexhaustible coal mines, it is one which seems 
to be established on a very secure foundation.’ 46 
‘Natural advantages,’ however, as a basis for the universal application 
of the policy of free trade, was likely to suggest two comments. One is 
that the greater cheapness with which one country can produce goods 
as compared with another is obviously in some cases due to no peculiar 
advantage in the geographical sense, but simply to the historical fact 
that the manufacture was established there earlier. The other is that 
a country may even possess geographical advantages for a particular 
production but be unable to develop them if importation is free, because, 
for the time being, another country is producing more cheaply. If the 
‘intention’ of ‘the Author of the world,’ or of ‘ Nature,’ is shown 
by the provision of particular physical resources, it can hardly be sup- 
posed proper to allow it to be indefinitely ‘ counteracted’ ; 47 and this 
vital point in the argument was seized upon by Alexander Hamilton. 
Hamilton, the author of the greater part of ‘The Federalist,’ is the most 
considerable name in the political science of the United States. His 
famous ‘ Report on Manufactures,’ written in 1790, only fourteen years 
after the appearance of the ‘Wealth of Nations,’ and long before List and 
John Stuart Mill, shows a powerful mind working on the material presented 
to him by Adam Smith and the French economists, but with the needs and 
conditions of a new country before his eyes. And as soon as we realise 
that ‘ advantages ’ was a key-word in the discussion, we cannot but appre- 
ciate the dexterity with which Hamilton employs it to justify protection. 
Writing at a time when water was still the usual motive-power for the new 
machinery, he alleges that in that respect ‘ some superiority of advantages 
may be claimed ’ for the United States ; as to the cost of materials, ‘ the 
advantage upon the whole is at present upon the side of the United States ’ ; 
and, generally, ‘it is certain that various objects in this country hold out 
advantages which are with difficulty to be equalled elsewhere.’ 48 
Adam Smith was quite shrewd enough to foresee criticism on this line. 
He meets it boldly: ‘ Whether the advantages which one country has 
over another be natural or acquired is in this respect’ (7.e. cheapness) 
‘of no consequence. So long as the one country has these advantages and 
the other wants them, it will always be more advantageous to the latter 
rather to buy of the former than to make.’ #® This is of course perfectly 
true, but inconclusive. That one policy is clearly more advantageous in 
the short run does not prove that it must be more advantageous in the 
long run. 
46 J. L. Mallet in his Diaries (excerpted in Political Economy Club, Centenary 
Volume, 1921) comments on the success of this Dictionary ; ‘ Two thousand copies of 
the first edition sold, at 2/. 10s. a copy, in the course of nine months.’ Cobden, in 
1835, described it as ‘ a work of unrivalled usefulness, which ought to have a place in 
the library of every merchant and reader who feels interested in the commerce of — 
the world.’ 
47 In the case of the exchange of English cloth for Portuguese wine, ‘ the intention 
of Nature’ was indicated to McCulloch by, inter alia, ‘ the superiority of the wool of 
England, our command of coals,’ ete. (Reprint, p. 71.) 
48 In the reprint in Taussig’s collection ; State Papers and Speeches on the Tariff 
(Cambridge, Mass., 1893), pp. 35, 36, 39, and elsewhere. 
49 Bk. IV., ch. ii. (IL, p. 31.) 
