will sometimes choose to lay out his little ca- during all this period. The cultivation and pital in land. A man of profession, too, improvement of the country has, no doubt, whose revenue is derived from another source, been gradually advancing too; but it seems to often loves to secure his savings in the same have followed slowly, and at a distance, the way. But a young man, who, instead of ap- more rapid progress of commerce and manuplying to trade or to some profession, should factures. The greater part of the country employ a capital of two or three thousand must probably have been cultivated before the pounds in the purchase and cultivation of a reign of Elizabeth; and a very great part of small piece of land, might indeed expect to it still remains uncultivated, and the cultivalive very happily and very independently, but tion of the far greater part much inferior to must bid adieu for ever to all hope of either what it might be. The law of England, howgreat fortune or great illustration, which, by ever, favours agriculture, not only indirectly, a different employment of his stock, he might by the protection of commerce, but by several have had the same chance of acquiring with direct encouragements. Except in times of other people. Such a person, too, though he scarcity, the exportation of corn is not only free, cannot aspire at being a proprietor, will often but encouraged by a bounty. In times of modisdain to be a farmer. The small quantity derate plenty, the importation of foreign corn is of land, therefore, which is brought to mar- loaded with duties that amount to a prohibi ket, and the high price of what is brought tion. The importation of live cattle, except thither, prevents a great number of capitals from Ireland, is prohibited at all times; and from being employed in its cultivation and it is but of late that it was permitted from improvement, which would otherwise have thence. Those who cultivate the land, theretaken that direction. In North America, on fore, have a monopoly against their countrythe contrary, fifty or sixty pounds is often men for the two greatest and most important found a sufficient stock to begin a plantation articles of land produce, bread and butcher's with. The purchase and improvement of un-meat. These encouragements, though at botcultivated land is there the most profitable em- tom, perhaps, as I shall endeavour to show ployment of the smallest as well as of the hereafter, altogether illusory, sufficiently degreatest capitals, and the most direct road to monstrate at least the good intention of the leall the fortune and illustration which can be gislature to favour agriculture. But what is acquired in that country. Such land, indeed, of much more importance than all of them, is in North America to be had almost for no- the yeomanry of England are rendered as sething, or at a price much below the value of cure, as independent, and as respectable, as the natural produce; a thing impossible in law can make them. No country, therefore, Europe, or indeed in any country where all in which the right of primogeniture takes lands have long been private property. If place, which pays tithes, and where perpetuilanded estates, however, were divided equally ties, though contrary to the spirit of the law, among all the children, upon the death of any are admitted in some cases, can give more enproprietor who left a numerous family, the couragement to agriculture than England. estate would generally be sold. So much land Such, however, notwithstanding, is the state would come to market, that it could no long-of its cultivation. What would it have been, er sell at a monopoly price. The free rent of had the law given no direct encouragement to the land would go no nearer to pay the inte- agriculture besides what arises indirectly from rest of the purchase-money, and a small ca- the progress of commerce, and had left the pital might be employed in purchasing land yeomanry in the same condition as in most as profitable as in any other way. other countries of Europe? It is now more England, on account of the natural fertility than two hundred years since the beginning of the soil, of the great extent of the sea-coast of the reign of Elizabeth, a period as long as in proportion to that of the whole country, the course of human prosperity usually enand of the many navigable rivers which run dures. through it, and afford the conveniency of wa- France seems to have had a considerable ter carriage to some of the most inland parts share of foreign commerce, near a century of it, is perhaps as well fitted by nature as before England was distinguished as a comany large country in Europe to be the seat of mercial country. The marine of France was foreign commerce, of manufactures for distant considerable, according to the notions of the sale, and of all the improvements which these times, before the expedition of Charles VIII. can occasion. From the beginning of the to Naples. The cultivation and improvement reign of Elizabeth, too, the Enguish legisla- of France, however, is, upon the whole, infeture has been peculiarly attentive to the interior to that of England. The law of the rest of commerce and manufactures, and in country has never given the same direct enreality there is no country in Europe, Hol-couragement to agriculture. land itself not excepted, of which the law is, The foreign commerce of Spain and Portuupon the whole, more favourable to this sort gal to the other parts of Europe, though of industry. Commerce and manufactures chiefly carried on in foreign ships, is very conhave accordingly been continually advancing | siderable. That to their colonies is carried Italy is the only great country of Europe which seems to have been cultivated and improved in every part, by means of foreign commerce and manufactures for distant sale. Before the invasion of Charles VIII., Italy, according to Guicciardini, was cultivated not less in the most mountainous and barren parts of the country, than in the plainest and most fertile. The advantageous situation of the country, and the great number of independent states which at that time subsisted in it, probably contributed not a little to this general cultivation. It is not impossible, too, notwithstanding this general expression of one of the most judicious and reserved of modern historians, that Italy was not at that time better cultivated than England is at present. on in their own, and is much greater, on ac- it supports, from one country to another. No count of the great riches and extent of those part of it can be said to belong to any parti colonies. But it has never introduced any cular country, till it has been spread, as it considerable manufactures for distant sale in- were, over the face of that country, either in to either of those countries, and the greater buildings, or in the lasting improvement of part of both still remains uncultivated. The lands. No vestige now remains of the great foreign commerce of Portugal is of older wealth said to have been possessed by the standing than that of any great country in greater part of the Hanse Towns, except in the obscure histories of the thirteenth and Europe, except Italy. It is even uncertair fourteenth centuries. where some of them were situated, or to what towns in Europe the Latin names given to some of them belong. But though the misfortunes of Italy, in the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries, greatly diminished the commerce and manu factures of the cities of Lombardy and Tuscany, those countries still continue to be 2mong the most populous and best cultivated in Europe. The civil wars of Flanders, and the Spanish government which succeeded them, chased away the great commerce of Antwerp, Ghent, and Bruges. But Flanders still continues to be one of the richest, best cultivated, and most populous provinces of Europe. The ordinary revolutions of war and government The capital, however, that is acquired to easily dry up the sources of that wealth which That which aany country by commerce and manufactures, arises from commerce only. is always a very precarious and uncertain pos- rises from the more solid improvements of agsession, till some part of it has been secured riculture is much more durable, and cannot and realized in the cultivation and improve- be destroyed but by those more violent conA merchant, it has been vulsions occasioned by the depredations of ment of its lands. said very properly, is not necessarily the citi-hostile and barbarous nations continued for a zen of any particular country. It is in a century or two together; such as those that great measure indifferent to him from what happened for some time before and after the place he carries on his trade; and a very trifl- fall of the Roman empire in the western pro ing disgust will make him remove his capital, vinces of Europe. Note 23. and, together with it, all the industry which BOOK IV. OF SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY. INTRODUCTION. POLITICAL economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects; first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or, more properly, to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and, secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign The different progress of opulence in different ages and nations, has given occasion to two different systems of political economy, with regard to enriching the people. The one may be called the system of commerce, the other that of agriculture. I shall endeavour to explain both as fully and distinctly as I can, and shall begin with the system of commerce. It is the modern system, and is best understood in our own country and in our own imes. Note 24. CHAP. I. of all other commodities by the quantity of money which they will exchange for. We say of a rich man, that he is worth a great deal, and of a poor man, that he is worth very little money. A frugal man, or a man eager to be rich, is said to love money; and a careless, a generous, or a profuse man, is said to be indifferent about it. To grow rich is to get money; and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous. A rich country, in the same manner as a rich man, is supposed to be a country abounding in money; and to heap up gold and silver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it. For some time after the discovery of America, the first inquiry of the Spaniards, when they arrived upon any unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighbourhood? By the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if the country was worth the conquering. Plano Carpino, a monk sent ambassador from the king of France to one of the sons of the famous Gengis Khan, says, that the Tartars used frequently to ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France? Their inquiry had the same object with that of the Spaniards. They OF THE PRINCIPLE OF THE COMMERCIAL OF wanted to know if the country was rich enough MERCANTILE SYSTEM. THAT wealth consists in money, or in gold to be worth the conquering. Among the Tartars, as among all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of the use of money, cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of value. Wealth, there fore, according to them, consisted in cattle, as, according to the Spaniards, it consisted in gold and silver. Of the two, the Tartar notion, perhaps, was the nearest to the truth. Mr Locke remarks a distinction between money and other moveable goods. All other moveable goods, he says, are of so consumable a nature, that the wealth which consists in them cannot be much depended on; and a nation which abounds in them one year may, Mr Mun compares this operation of foreign trade to the seed-time and harvest of If we only behold,' says he, agriculture. the actions of the husbandman in the seedtime, when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we shall account him rather a madman than a husbandman. But when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful increase of his actions.' without any exportation, but merely by their quantity of those metals in the kingdom; that, own waste and extravagance, be in great want on the contrary, it might frequently increase of them the next. Money, on ne contrary, is the quantity; because, if the consumption of a steady friend, which, though it may travel foreign goods was not thereby increased in the about from hand to hand, yet if it can be kept country, those goods might be re-exported to from going out of the country, is not very li- foreign countries, and being there sold for a able to be wasted and consumed. Gold and large profit, might bring back much more treasilver, therefore, are, according to him, the sure than was originally sent out to purchase most solid and substantial part of the move-them. able wealth of a nation; and to multiply those metals ought, he thinks, upon that account, to be the great object of its political economy. Others admit, that if a nation could be separated from all the world, it would be of no consequence how much or how little money circulated in it. The consumable goods, which were circulated by means of this money, would only be exchanged for a greater or a smaller number of pieces; but the real wealth They represented, secondly, that this prohior poverty of the country, they allow, would bition could not hinder the exportation of gold depend altogether upon the abundance or scar- and silver, which, on account of the smallness city of those consumable goods. But it is of their bulk in proportion to their value, otherwise, they think, with countries which could easily be smuggled abroad. That this have connections with foreign nations, and exportation could only be prevented by a prowhich are obliged to carry on foreign wars, per attention to what they called the balance That when the country exported to and to maintain fleets and armies in distant of trade. countries. This, they say, cannot be done, a greater value than it imported, a balance beout by sending abroad money to pay them came due to it from foreign nations, which with; and a nation cannot send much money was necessarily paid to it in gold and silver abroad, unless it has a good deal at home. and thereby increased the quantity of those Every such nation, therefore, must endeavour, metals in the kingdom. But that when it imin time of peace, to accumulate gold and sil-ported to a greater value than it exported, a ver, that when occasion requires, it may have wherewithal to carry on foreign wars. contrary balance became due to foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to them in In consequence of those popular notions, all the same manner, and thereby diminished that the different nations of Europe have studied, quantity: that in this case, to prohibit the exthough to little purpose, every possible means portation of those metals, could not prevent it, of accumulating gold and silver in their re- but only, by making it more dangerous, renspective countries. Spain and Portugal, the der it more expensive: that the exchange was proprietors of the principal mines which sup- thereby turned more against the country which ply Europe with those metals, have either pro- owed the balance, than it otherwise might hibited their exportation under the severest have been; the merchant who purchased a penalties, or subjected it to a considerable du- bill upon the foreign country being obliged to ty. The like prohibition seems anciently to pay the banker who sold it, not only for the have made a part of the policy of most other natural risk, trouble, and expense of sending European nations. It is even to be found, the money thither, but for the extraordinary where we should least of all expect to find it, in some old Scotch acts of Parliament, which forbid, under heavy penalties, the carrying gold or silver forth of the kingdom. The like policy anciently took place both in France and England. risk arising from the prohibition; but that the more the exchange was against any country, the more the balance of trade became necessarily against it; the money of that country becoming necessarily of so much less value, in comparison with that of the country to which That if the exchange When those countries became commercial, the balance was due. the merchants found this prohibition, upon between England and Holland, for example, many occasions, extremely inconvenient. They was five per cent. against England, it would could frequently buy more advantageously require 105 ounces of silver in England to with gold and silver, than with any other com- purchase a bill for 100 ounces of silver in modity, the foreign goods which they wanted, Holland: that 105 ounces of silver in Engeither to import into their own, or to carry to land, therefore, would be worth only 100 some other foreign country. They remon- ounces of silver in Holland, and would purstrated, therefore, against this prohibition as chase only a proportionable quantity of Dutch hurtful to trade. goods; but that 100 ounces of silver in Ho! They represented, first, that the exportation land, on the contrary, would be worth 105 of gold and silver, in order to purchase fo- ounces in England, and would purchase a reign goods, did not always diminish the proportionable quantity of English goods; : that the English goods which were sold to selves that they knew nothing about the matHolland would be sold so much cheaper, and ter. That foreign trade enriched the counthe Dutch goods which were sold to England try, experience demonstrated to the nobles and so much dearer, by the difference of the ex-country gentlemen, as well as to the merchange that the one would draw so much less chants; but how, or in what manner, none of Dutch money to England, and the other so them well knew. The merchants knew permuch more English money to Holland, as fectly in what manner it enriched themselves, this difference amounted to: and that the ba- it was their business to know it. But to know lance of trade, therefore, would necessarily be in what manner it enriched the country, was so much more against England, and would no part of their business. The subject never require a greater balance of gold and silver to came into their consideration, but when they be exported to Holland. had occasion to apply to their country for Those arguments were partly solid and some change in the laws relating to foreign partly sophistical. They were solid, so far as trade. It then became necessary to say somethey asserted that the exportation of gold and thing about the beneficial effects of foreig" silver in trade might frequently be advantage- trade, and the manner in which those effects ous to the country. They were solid, too, in were obstructed by the laws as they then stood. asserting that no prohibition could prevent To the judges who were to decide the busitheir exportation, when private people found ness, it appeared a most satisfactory account any advantage in exporting them. But they of the matter, when they were told that fowere sophistical, in supposing, that either to reign trade brought money into the country, preserve or to augment the quantity of those but that the laws in question hindered it from metals required more the attention of govern- bringing so much as it otherwise would do. ment, than to preserve or to augment the quan- Those arguments, therefore, produced the tity of any other useful commodities, which wished-for effect. The prohibition of exportthe freedom of trade, without any such atten- ing gold and silver was, in France and Engtion, never fails to supply in the proper quan- land, confined to the coin of those respective tity. They were sophistical, too, perhaps, in countries. The exportation of foreign coin asserting that the high price of exchange ne- and of bullion was made free. In Holland, cessarily increased what they called the unfa-and in some other places, this liberty was exvourable balance of trade, or occasioned the tended even to the coin of the country. The exportation of a greater quantity of gold and attention of government was turned away silver. That high price, indeed, was extremely from guarding against the exportation of gold disadvantageous to the merchants who had and silver, to watch over the balance of trade, any money to pay in foreign countries. They as the only cause which could occasion any paid so much dearer for the bills which their augmentation or diminution of those metals. bankers granted them upon those countries, From one fruitless care, it was turned away But though the risk arising from the prohibi- to another care much more intricate, much tion might occasion some extraordinary ex-more embarrassing, and just equally fruitpense to the bankers, it would not necessarily less. The title of Mun's book, England's carry any more money out of the country. Treasure in Foreign Trade, became a fundaThis expense would generally be all laid out mental maxim in the political economy, not in the country, in smuggling the money out of of England only, but of all other commercial it, and could seldom occasion the exportation countries. The inland or home trade, the of a single sixpence beyond the precise sum most important of all, the trade in which an drawn for. The high price of exchange, too, equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and would naturally dispose the merchants to en- creates the greatest employment to the people deavour to make their exports nearly balance of the country, was considered as subsidiary their imports, in order that they might have only to foreign trade. It neither brought this high exchange to pay upon as small a money into the country, it was said, nor carsum as possible. The high price of exchange, ried any out of it. The country, therefore, besides, must necessarily have operated as a could never become either richer or poorer by tax, in raising the price of foreign goods, and means of it, except so far as its prosperity or thereby diminishing their consumption. It decay might indirectly influence the state of would tend, therefore, not to increase, but to foreign trade. diminish, what they called the unfavourable A country that has no mines of its own, balance of trade, and consequently the expor- must undoubtedly draw its gold and silver from tation of gold and silver. foreign countries, in the same manner as one Such as they were, however, those argu- that has no vineyards of its own must draw ments convinced the people to whom they its wines. It does not seem necessary, howwere addressed. They were addressed by mer-ever, that the attention of government should chants to parliaments and to the councils of be more turned towards the one than towards princes, to nobles, and to country gentlemen; the other object. A country that has whereby those who were supposed to understand withal to buy wine, will always get the wine trade, to those who were conscious to them-which it has occasion for; and a country that |