REGULATE THE INTERCHANGE OF COMMODITIES. 189 



thereby making the most of our industry. Whether we send out the 

 actual commodities we have produced, or the gold we have bought 

 with those commodities, is of no consequence whatever to national 

 prosperity, which is advanced by all our successful industry, and 

 could only be retarded by artificial checks on our freedom to try and 

 benefit ourselves. 



Now let us suppose that some protected manufacture does find out 

 and employ possible labour, which was otherwise lost ; and let us ad- 

 mit this to be a benefit — though perhaps it is chiefly labour of young 

 persons who would be better at school, and whose parents, with in- 

 dustry and economy, could afford to keep them there — the benefit, 

 such as it is, has been obtained at the cost to the country of the 

 whole diff'erence between the natural and the protected price of the 

 article ; which sum, if not thus paid, would either have been spent in 

 employing labour, or, which is nearly the same and even still more 

 useful, would have become capital. Now will any one explain how 

 much is gained, or venture to affirm that the good is worth its cost? 



The next question for our consideration is, assuming restriction on 

 the freedom of exchange of all commodities to be an evil, but sup- 

 posing another nation with which we might deal to have ignorantly 

 adopted it, what effect should that circumstance have upon us ? The 

 restriction shuts us out of a market, and is thus a real evil to us. 

 But in consequence, we shall either give our industry some other di- 

 rection or find out some other market, and the evil may not be great : 

 whilst to the people at large, which lays on the restriction, the loss 

 from it must be a very heavy one — a general tax for the benefit of a 

 class, blindly and unwisely submitted to. There is something which 

 that country has to sell which we want ; if we buy it, we do so be- 

 cause we want it, and can get it best there. If as a nation we shut 

 it out, we tax our own people to spite our neighbours, or to show 

 them that we approve what they do, and can be quite as unwise as 

 they. What other benefit we gain by refusing to buy in a convenient 

 market, I confess passes my comprehension. 



Our third and last inquiry is, whether the duties on imports re- 

 quired for revenue can be so managed as to stimulate home produc- 

 tion, and thus diminish at least their unavoidable evils. It ought 

 surely to be sufficient to observe that, in the supposed case, the 

 country requires the revenue ; so soon, therefore, as the duties become 

 protective, that is, that they cause the article to be supplied in the 



Vol. VI. N 



