NOTES ON ECONOMICAL SCIENCE. 103 



There are many minor manufactories which are best carried on in the 

 locahties where their products are needed, and some more extensive 

 ones will often arise from the skill and energy of individuals or the 

 special facilities afforded for them. Cases may even occur in which 

 a wise and far seeing people might offer some special encouragement 

 in the way of bribe to a particular form of industry which seemed 

 capable of being carried on with advantage, but was checked by pre- 

 liminary difficulties. At the least where manufactures arise naturally, 

 and can be carried on profitably, they are an advantage to any coun- 

 try, were it only by offering greater variety of industrial employment. 

 Nevertheless what countries shall become great manufacturiug coun- 

 tries or at what period they shall become so, depends on natural 

 causes which cannot be forced, and any attempt to force them is at 

 once unjust to the people at large who have to pay the price of the 

 protection afforded, and unfavourable to the gen-Bral prosperity. The 

 usual conditions favourable to extensive manufactories are cheap fuel, 

 cheap labour and cheap capital. For the fuel there may be a par- 

 tial substitute in good water power — but cheap labour or low wages is 

 a condition not belonging to a new country and very far from being 

 in itself desirable — and cheap capital, which means abundance of 

 money seeking profitable employment amidst a competition which 

 obliges the owners to be content with a low rate of profit, can never 

 be found where the newness of a country causes a want of many im- 

 provements for which capital is eagerly sought and highly paid for. 

 No man of sense, considering how readily all the capital existing in 

 this country or which can be drawn into it from abroadf is employed 



f It is sometimes said that this capital instead of being employed in improve- 

 ments -which aid production, repaying themselves and increasing wealth, is 

 borrowed to pay for luxuries which we have no right to enjoy, and is employed 

 as part of our consumption, rendering the whole nation continually poorer. In 

 whatever degree this is the case it is both a dangerous economical, and a bad 

 moral symptom, and it is to be feared that instances could easily be produced, 

 for all countries afiford examples in which the possession of a certain, perhaps 

 considerable amount of property, only creates habits of indulgence which require 

 more than is possessed for their gratification, and the existing property yielding 

 an annual produce may, of course, be made answerable for an immediate loan, 

 until the interest swallows up the whole proceeds, and extravagance has ruined 

 the owner. If the condition of our country offers any special inducements to 

 Buch conduct, if cases of the kind are peculiarly frequent amongst us, and it is 

 the fact that the capital we obtain on the pretence of being able to use it well 

 is wasted in the manner supposed, theu we are in a very bad state, and the evil 



