172 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
are occasionally employed in country labour.’ And finally that, whatever 
happens, there will, in any case, remain the same “ stock’ or capital in the 
country, and that this will employ an equal number of people in some 
other way. ; 
Obvious comments may be made on each of these points. The use of a 
term like ‘inconveniency ’ ; °° the use of the word ‘easily’ to describe 
transference even to ‘ collateral ’ manufactures ; *! the view that whatever 
particular home industry might be killed by foreign imports, ‘ the capital 
of the country remains the same ’"—a view so increasingly difficult to hold, 
as capital comes to be fixed in specialised plant; these points each 
suggest some evident reflections.** But it will be enough to dwell for a 
moment on the remarkable argument that ‘ the greater part of workmen 
in manufactures are occasionally employed in country labour.’ In the age 
of ‘ domestic industry,’ agriculture and manufacture were in truth often 
combined, in various ways, by the same persons or families; though one 
may doubt whether this was true of ‘the greater part of workmen in manu- 
factures’ in England at the time Smith waswriting. Need one say that the 
whole trend of development ever since has been away from such a combina- 
tion, above all in England ? 
When we come to McCulloch, half a century later, there isan unmistak- 
able change in the intellectual atmosphere. This country had in the 
interval entered, first of all the nations, into the machine and factory age ; 
and, whether it was owing to that cause alone and the consequent cheapness 
of our commodities, or to other causes also, England had for the time a 
monopoly of the most importantmanufactures. The cotton industry, hardly 
existent in 1776, in 1825 was exporting goods to the value of much over 
18 millions of pounds sterling. We had been, on balance, an iron-importing 
country ; in the last three decades, imports had fallen by three-quarters, 
and exports had quadrupled. Accordingly, McCulloch could write quite 
in the strain of Rule, Britannia! Other nations might not beso blest, but 
: 
4 
‘ 
we should flourish! Whatever ‘loss and inconvenience’ might follow a — 
Free Trade policy ‘in other countries,’ ‘ our superiority in the arts is so 
very great, that only a very inconsiderable proportion of our population 
would be driven from the employments now exercised by them by the 
freest importation of foreign products.’ % 
Accordingly there was no need to alleviate possible apprehension by 
invoking the aid of occasional agricultural employment. Any residue of 
8° The word is echoed by Fawcett, Free Trade and Protection, p. 9: ‘The loss and 
inconvenience which always accompany the transfer of capital and labour from one 
employment to another.’ 
81 Smith did, at any rate, unlike Hume, limit the ease of transference to ‘ collateral ’ 
manufactures. T. B. Say—who, according to Ricardo, ‘succeeded in placing the 
science ’ of Smith ‘in a more logical and instructive order,’ and had more influence on 
English writers than is now remembered—rivals Hume in his economic imagination. 
If, he says, France refuses to take English woollens, ‘ England will employ the same 
capital and the same manual labour in the preparation of ardent spirits by the 
distillation of grain that were before occupied in the manufacture of woollens for the 
French market.’ (1803; English translation of 1820.) 
82 Smith on the next page recognises that that part of manufacturing capital 
‘ which is fixed in workhouses and in the instruments of trade could scarce be disposed 
of without considerable loss.’ He could not foresee how large a part this was destined 
to become. 
83 Part II., Section II. (Reprint, p. 76.) 
