Political Economy [39]
any manufacture at home, that so they might be more dependent on the mother country. They were carefully prevented from following any species of foreign trade; they were subjected to regulations the most vexatious, and contrary to their own interests; not for the mother country's good, but for the good of a small number of merchants. The infinite advantages attached to a new country, where every kind of labour is profitable, because every thing is yet to do, enabled colonies to prosper, although they were continually sacrificed. As their raw produce was fit for a distant trade, they had it in their power to support a most unequal exchange, in which nothing was taken from them that the buyer could procure at home; but their rapid increase itself bears witness against the system which has founded them; they have prospered by a system diametrically opposite to that followed by the mother country. The exportation of all raw produce, the importation of all wrought produce, has been encouraged in colonies, and have presented to such as believe in the existence, and calculate the state, of a commercial balance, a result as disadvantageous for themselves, as it was advantageous for the mother country. Doubtless, their oppression gave the latter all the profits of a monopoly; yet, in a very circumscribed market; whilst the free trade of all Europe, with all its colonies, would have been more advantageous for both, by infinitely extending the market of the one, and accelerating the progress of the other. What justice and policy should have taught, force will obtain, and the colonial system cannot long continue. Governments, in the last place, to favour commerce, have granted it bounties and drawbacks. A bounty is a reward which the state decrees to the manufacturer, on account of his goods, which comes to him in the shape of profit. A drawback is a restitution of all the taxes, which a piece of goods had paid, granted to it at the moment of its exportation. A drawback is perfectly just and reasonable. It leaves the national producer, in the foreign market, on a footing of equality with all his rivals, whilst, if beforehand be had paid a tax in his own country, he could not have sustained the competition. Bounties are the strangest encouragements which a government can give. They may be justified when granted for the fabrication of an article, the production of which it is necessary to procure at any price: but when granted on exported goods, as often happens, government pays merchants, at the expense of its own subjects, that foreigners may buy cheaper than them. Thus, nearly all the favours which governments confer on trade and manufactures, are contrary even to sound policy or justice; and, judging of them by the law of profit and loss, we should infer, that all this attention, bestowed by government on trade, had done more ill than good. But political economy is, in great part, a moral science. After having calculated the interests of men, it ought also to foresee what will act upon their passions. Ruled, as they are, by self-interest, pointing out their advantage will not be sufficient to determine their pursuit of it. Nations have sometimes need of being shaken, as it were, to be roused from their torpor. The small weight which would suffice to incline the balance, with a calculating people, is not sufficient when that balance is rusted by prejudice and long continued habits. In such a case, a skilful administration must occasionally submit to allow a real and calculable loss, in order to destroy an old custom, or change a destructive prepossession. When rooted prejudices have abandoned to disrespect every useful and industrious profession, when a nation thinks there can be no dignity except in noble indolence; when even men of science themselves, carried away by public opinion, blush at the useful applications made of their discoveries, and in such applications see nothing but what they call the cookery of their sciences; it perhaps becomes necessary to grant favours, altogether extraordinary, to the industry which it