104 NOTES ON ECONOMICAL SCIENCE. 



at a high rate of interest, can suppose that manufacturing capital can 

 he obtained on such terms as the competition of the world' s-trade 

 would allow as profit. But the scheme perhaps is to manufacture for 

 ourselves and to exclude competition. If this is not now contemplated 

 it is what would soon be claimed were any steps taken to force manu- 

 factories. I surely need not employ many words on this subject. 

 Where trade is free every man does what he can do best, and every 

 one buys what he wants where he can get it best and cheapest — pro- 

 tection means a certain class of producers receiving for their goods 

 an extra price above what need be paid, which is taken from the 

 pockets of the consumers, — "Why then should the public be taxed to 

 support a class ? Not to ensure their having the goods, for these 

 would be freely offered at a lower price. But we pay an extra sum to 

 induce some of our workmen to employ themselves in a way that we 

 fancy rather than in the way that appeared to themselves profitable, 

 at what possible benefit to the community it would be difficult to 

 determine. J Manufactures which naturally arise and can be profi- 



being a moral one this is hardly the place for discussing the remedy, but it is 

 Burely a hasty judgment which affirms that the large amount of introduced 

 capital is really thus sacrificed ruinously to ourselves and dishonestly in respect 

 to those from ■whom we borrow, and the great progress of the country of late 

 years in substantial improvements, contributing to wealth, may be taken as 

 proving that there has been a large profitable investment. It would doubtless 

 be wise to spend less on luxuries and reserve more of what we obtain to increase 

 our own capital, and it is well to make the rising generation sensible of the folly 

 of that extravagance which arose from the temporary abundance of money from 

 the expenditure on our great public works, urging them to a frugal and moderate 

 course as really the happiest, and the sure road to prosperity individual and 

 national, but it would be false to assume that our people are not in a condition to 

 partake reasonably in the comforts of life, without dishonest extravagance, or to 

 doubt that capital is largely and well invested in promoting the real advancement 

 of the country. 



X It is maintained that the history of certain manufactures which could never 

 obtain a firm footing in Canada, whilst our duties were too low to check impor- 

 tation, but which have since greatly flourished as much to the advantage of the 

 public at large as of the manufacturers, the articles being supplied at lower pricea 

 than under the former system, proves the advantage of protection in a new 

 conntry, that we see the same in the successful manufactures of New England 

 and Pennsylvania, and that England herself raised her manufactures by protec- 

 tion and resorted to free trade when she had such extensive possession of the 

 world's markets that she could no longer be injured. To the first point I can 

 only reply that it being quite evident from the nature of trade, that protection is 

 a tax on each consumer for the benefit of the producers, and the producers of 



