110 NOTES ON ECONOMICAL SCIENCE. 



^ut their wishes so far as we are able. It may not be possible for us 

 after recent changes, to carry on much commercial intercourse in a 

 particular direction. To this we must reconcile ourselves and find out, 

 as we certainly may, other places where the products of our country 

 may have even a higher value, and the returns may be quite as advan- 

 tageous to us. Trade, even with very distant countries, if they happen 

 to be places where what we produce bears a high price, and some 

 things that we want are plentiful and cheap, may be highly profitable, 

 and the circumstances which force a people to look out for new chan- 

 nels for trade, though for the moment injurious, are often eminently 

 beneficial in the result. 



When any nation refuses to buy from another, on the protective 

 principle, the spirit of retaliation suggests refusing, in return, to 

 buy any thing from it ; but wisdom whispers that we do not the 

 less want what our neighbour can sell on terms which are, on the 

 whole, favourable ; and though he may be prevented, perhaps by 

 illiberal views, from purchasing from us what we can offer advan- 

 tageously, that is no reason for our depriving ourselves of what 

 we can obtain best or cheapest from him. Our business is to raise 

 some desirable things for producing which we have the greatest 

 facilities in the greatest abundance we can, sell what we have 

 raised in the best market we can find, and employ the proceeds in 

 purchasing what we want wherever we can obtain it on the best 

 terms. It is not always that the tailor can secure the shoemaker he 

 wishes to deal with as his customer for clothes, yet he will buy the 

 cheapest and best shoes within his reach, and would be very silly if 

 in retaliation for the shoemaker not buying his clothes he took a 

 dearer or inferior article from another. It would be the height of 

 folly if to spite the shoemaker, he resolved to make such shoes as he 

 could himself, thus wasting time which might have been profitably 

 employed at his own proper business. It is often argued that if we 

 allow a nation to sell to us that does not buy from us, we give up to 

 that nation all the advantage of the trade both ways, and consent to 

 be ourselves losers, whilst, it is said, if we guard by a sufficient duty 

 against this supposed injury, it will become possible for our own 

 people profitably to produce the article in question, and a new branch 

 of industry is introduced amongst us. But it may be replied in the 

 first place that the seller is not the only or of necessity the chief 

 gainer by a transaction. He gains by what he offers, having cost 



