is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods, is
when some foreign nation restrains, by high duties or prohibitions, the
importation of some of our manufactures into their country. Revenge, in
this case, naturally dictates retaliation, and that we should impose the
like duties and prohibitions upon the importation of some or all of their
manufactures into ours. Nations, accordingly, seldom fail to retaliate in
this manner. The French have been particularly forward to favour their own
manufactures, by restraining the importation of such foreign goods as
could come into competition with them. In this consisted a great part of
the policy of Mr Colbert, who, notwithstanding his great abilities, seems
in this case to have been imposed upon by the sophistry of merchants and
manufacturers, who are always demanding a monopoly against their
countrymen. It is at present the opinion of the most intelligent men in
France, that his operations of this kind have not been beneficial to his
country. That minister, by the tariff of 1667, imposed very high duties
upon a great number of foreign manufactures. Upon his refusing to moderate
them in favour of the Dutch, they, in 1671, prohibited the importation of
the wines, brandies, and manufactures of France. The war of 1672 seems to
have been in part occasioned by this commercial dispute. The peace of
Nimeguen put an end to it in 1678, by moderating some of those duties in
favour of the Dutch, who in consequence took off their prohibition. It was
about the same time that the French and English began mutually to oppress
each other’s industry, by the like duties and prohibitions, of which the
French, however, seem to have set the first example, The spirit of
hostility which has subsisted between the two nations ever since, has
hitherto hindered them from being moderated on either side. In 1697, the
English prohibited the importation of bone lace, the manufacture of
Flanders. The government of that country, at that time under the dominion
of Spain, prohibited, in return, the importation of English woollens. In
1700, the prohibition of importing bone lace into England was taken off
upon condition that the importation of English woollens into Flanders
should be put on the same footing as before.
There may be good policy in retaliations of this kind, when there is a
probability that they will procure the repeal of the high duties or
prohibitions complained of. The recovery of a great foreign market will
generally more than compensate the transitory inconveniency of paying
dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods. To judge whether such
retaliations are likely to produce such an effect, does not, perhaps,
belong so much to the science of a legislator, whose deliberations ought
to be governed by general principles, which are always the same, as to the
skill of that insidious and crafty animal vulgarly called a statesman or
politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of
affairs. When there is no probability that any such repeal can be
procured, it seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain
classes of our people, to do another injury ourselves, not only to those
classes, but to almost all the other classes of them. When our neighbours
prohibit some manufacture of ours, we generally prohibit, not only the
same, for that alone would seldom affect them considerably, but some other
manufacture of theirs. This may, no doubt, give encouragement to some
particular class of workmen among ourselves, and, by excluding some of
their rivals, may enable them to raise their price in the home market.
Those workmen however, who suffered by our neighbours prohibition, will
not be benefited by ours. On the contrary, they, and almost all the other
classes of our citizens, will thereby be obliged to pay dearer than before
for certain goods. Every such law, therefore, imposes a real tax upon the
whole country, not in favour of that particular class of workmen who were
injured by our neighbours prohibitions, but of some other class.
The case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation, how far,
or in what manner, it is proper to restore the free importation of foreign
goods, after it has been for some time interrupted, is when particular
manufactures, by means of high duties or prohibitions upon all foreign
goods which can come into competition with them, have been so far extended
as to employ a great multitude of hands. Humanity may in this case require
that the freedom of trade should be restored only by slow gradations, and
with a good deal of reserve and circumspection. Were those high duties and
prohibitions taken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of the same
kind might be poured so fast into the home market, as to deprive all at
once many thousands of our people of their ordinary employment and means
of subsistence. The disorder which this would occasion might no doubt be
very considerable. It would in all probability, however, be much less than
is commonly imagined, for the two following reasons.
First, All those manufactures of which any part is commonly exported to
other European countries without a bounty, could be very little affected
by the freest importation of foreign goods. Such manufactures must be sold
as cheap abroad as any other foreign goods of the same quality and kind,
and consequently must be sold cheaper at home. They would still,
therefore, keep possession of the home market; and though a capricious man
of fashion might sometimes prefer foreign wares, merely because they were
foreign, to cheaper and better goods of the same kind that were made at
home, this folly could, from the nature of things, extend to so few, that
it could make no sensible impression upon the general employment of the
people. But a great part of all the different branches of our woollen
manufacture, of our tanned leather, and of our hardware, are annually
exported to other European countries without any bounty, and these are the
manufactures which employ the greatest number of hands. The silk, perhaps,
is the manufacture which would suffer the most by this freedom of trade,
and after it the linen, though the latter much less than the former.
Secondly, Though a great number of people should, by thus restoring the
freedom of trade, be thrown all at once out of their ordinary employment
and common method of subsistence, it would by no means follow that they
would thereby be deprived either of employment or subsistence. By the
reduction of the army and navy at the end of the late war, more than
100,000 soldiers and seamen, a number equal to what is employed in the
greatest manufactures, were all at once thrown out of their ordinary
employment: but though they no doubt suffered some inconveniency, they
were not thereby deprived of all employment and subsistence. The greater
part of the seamen, it is probable, gradually betook themselves to the
merchant service as they could find occasion, and in the mean time both
they and the soldiers were absorbed in the great mass of the people, and
employed in a great variety of occupations. Not only no great convulsion,
but no sensible disorder, arose from so great a change in the situation of
more than 100,000 men, all accustomed to the use of arms, and many of them
to rapine and plunder. The number of vagrants was scarce anywhere sensibly
increased by it; even the wages of labour were not reduced by it in any
occupation, so far as I have been able to learn, except in that of seamen
in the merchant service. But if we compare together the habits of a
soldier and of any sort of manufacturer, we shall find that those of the
latter do not tend so much to disqualify him from being employed in a new
trade, as those of the former from being employed in any. The manufacturer
has always been accustomed to look for his subsistence from his labour
only; the soldier to expect it from his pay. Application and industry have
been familiar to the one; idleness and dissipation to the other. But it is
surely much easier to change the direction of industry from one sort of
labour to another, than to turn idleness and dissipation to any. To the
greater part of manufactures, besides, it has already been observed, there
are other collateral manufactures of so similar a nature, that a workman
can easily transfer his industry from one of them to another. The greater
part of such workmen, too, are occasionally employed in country labour.
The stock which employed them in a particular manufacture before, will
still remain in the country, to employ an equal number of people in some
other way. The capital of the country remaining the same, the demand for
labour will likewise be the same, or very nearly the same, though it may
be exerted in different places, and for different occupations. Soldiers
and seamen, indeed, when discharged from the king’s service, are at
liberty to exercise any trade within any town or place of Great Britain or
Ireland. Let the same natural liberty of exercising what species of
industry they please, be restored to all his Majesty’s subjects, in the
same manner as to soldiers and seamen; that is, break down the exclusive
privileges of corporations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship, both
which are really encroachments upon natural Liberty, and add to those the
repeal of the law of settlements, so that a poor workman, when thrown out
of employment, either in one trade or in one place, may seek for it in
another trade or in another place, without the fear either of a
prosecution or of a removal; and neither the public nor the individuals
will suffer much more from the occasional disbanding some particular
classes of manufacturers, than from that of the soldiers. Our
manufacturers have no doubt great merit with their country, but they
cannot have more than those who defend it with their blood, nor deserve to
be treated with more delicacy.
To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely
restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or
Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the
public, but, what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of
many individuals, irresistibly oppose it. Were the officers of the army to
oppose, with the same zeal and unanimity, any reduction in the number of
forces, with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law
that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home market;
were the former to animate their soldiers, in the same manner as the
latter inflame their workmen, to attack with violence and outrage the
proposers of any such regulation; to attempt to reduce the army would be
as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish, in any respect,
the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us. This
monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of
them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable
to the government, and, upon many occasions, intimidate the legislature.
The member of parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening
this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding
trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose
numbers and wealth render them of great importance. If he opposes them, on
the contrary, and still more, if he has authority enough to be able to
thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank,
nor the greatest public services, can protect him from the most infamous
abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real
danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed
monopolists.
The undertaker of a great manufacture, who, by the home markets being
suddenly laid open to the competition of foreigners, should be obliged to
abandon his trade, would no doubt suffer very considerably. That part of
his capital which had usually been employed in purchasing materials, and
in paying his workmen, might, without much difficulty, perhaps, find
another employment; but that part of it which was fixed in workhouses, and
in the instruments of trade, could scarce be disposed of without
considerable loss. The equitable regard, therefore, to his interest,
requires that changes of this kind should never be introduced suddenly,
but slowly, gradually, and after a very long warning. The legislature,
were it possible that its deliberations could be always directed, not by
the clamorous importunity of partial interests, but by an extensive view
of the general good, ought, upon this very account, perhaps, to be
particularly careful, neither to establish any new monopolies of this
kind, nor to extend further those which are already established. Every
such regulation introduces some degree of real disorder into the
constitution of the state, which it will be difficult afterwards to cure
without occasioning another disorder.
How far it may be proper to impose taxes upon the importation of foreign
goods, in order not to prevent their importation, but to raise a revenue
for government, I shall consider hereafter when I come to treat of taxes.
Taxes imposed with a view to prevent, or even to diminish importation, are
evidently as destructive of the revenue of the customs as of the freedom
of trade.
CHAPTER III.
OF THE EXTRAORDINARY RESTRAINTS UPON
THE IMPORTATION OF GOODS OF ALMOST ALL KINDS, FROM THOSE COUNTRIES WITH WHICH
THE BALANCE IS SUPPOSED TO BE DISADVANTAGEOUS.
Part I—Of the Unreasonableness of those Restraints, even upon the
Principles of the Commercial System.
To lay extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods of almost
all kinds, from those particular countries with which the balance of trade
is supposed to be disadvantageous, is the second expedient by which the
commercial system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and silver.
Thus, in Great Britain, Silesia lawns may be imported for home
consumption, upon paying certain duties; but French cambrics and lawns are
prohibited to be imported, except into the port of London, there to be
warehoused for exportation. Higher duties are imposed upon the wines of
France than upon those of Portugal, or indeed of any other country. By
what is called the impost 1692, a duty of five and-twenty per cent. of the
rate or value, was laid upon all French goods; while the goods of other
nations were, the greater part of them, subjected to much lighter duties,
seldom exceeding five per cent. The wine, brandy, salt, and vinegar of
France, were indeed excepted; these commodities being subjected to other
heavy duties, either by other laws, or by particular clauses of the same
law. In 1696, a second duty of twenty-five per cent. the first not having
been thought a sufficient discouragement, was imposed upon all French
goods, except brandy; together with a new duty of five-and-twenty pounds
upon the ton of French wine, and another of fifteen pounds upon the ton of
French vinegar. French goods have never been omitted in any of those
general subsidies or duties of five per cent. which have been imposed upon
all, or the greater part, of the goods enumerated in the book of rates. If
we count the one-third and two-third subsidies as making a complete
subsidy between them, there have been five of these general subsidies; so
that, before the commencement of the present war, seventy-five per cent.
may be considered as the lowest duty to which the greater part of the
goods of the growth, produce, or manufacture of France, were liable. But
upon the greater part of goods, those duties are equivalent to a
prohibition. The French, in their turn, have, I believe, treated our goods
and manufactures just as hardly; though I am not so well acquainted with
the particular hardships which they have imposed upon them. Those mutual
restraints have put an end to almost all fair commerce between the two
nations; and smugglers are now the principal importers, either of British
goods into France, or of French goods into Great Britain. The principles
which I have been examining, in the foregoing chapter, took their origin
from private interest and the spirit of monopoly; those which I am going
te examine in this, from national prejudice and animosity. They are,
accordingly, as might well be expected, still more unreasonable. They are
so, even upon the principles of the commercial system.
First, Though it were certain that in the case of a free trade between
France and England, for example, the balance would be in favour of France,
it would by no means follow that such a trade would be disadvantageous to
England, or that the general balance of its whole trade would thereby be
turned more against it. If the wines of France are better and cheaper than
those of Portugal, or its linens than those of Germany, it would be more
advantageous for Great Britain to purchase both the wine and the foreign
linen which it had occasion for of France, than of Portugal and Germany.
Though the value of the annual importations from France would thereby be
greatly augmented, the value of the whole annual importations would be
diminished, in proportion as the French goods of the same quality were
cheaper than those of the other two countries. This would be the case,
even upon the supposition that the whole French goods imported were to be
consumed in Great Britain.
But, Secondly, A great part of them might be re-exported to other
countries, where, being sold with profit, they might bring back a return,
equal in value, perhaps, to the prime cost of the whole French goods
imported. What has frequently been said of the East India trade, might
possibly be true of the French; that though the greater part of East India
goods were bought with gold and silver, the re-exportation of a part of
them to other countries brought back more gold and silver to that which
carried on the trade, than the prime cost of the whole amounted to. One of
the most important branches of the Dutch trade at present, consists in the
carriage of French goods to other European countries. Some part even of
the French wine drank in Great Britain, is clandestinely imported from
Holland and Zealand. If there was either a free trade between France and
England, or if French goods could be imported upon paying only the same
duties as those of other European nations, to be drawn back upon
exportation, England might have some share of a trade which is found so
advantageous to Holland.
Thirdly, and lastly, There is no certain criterion by which we can
determine on which side what is called the balance between any two
countries lies, or which of them exports to the greatest value. National
prejudice and animosity, prompted always by the private interest of
particular traders, are the principles which generally direct our judgment
upon all questions concerning it. There are two criterions, however, which
have frequently been appealed to upon such occasions, the custom-house
books and the course of exchange. The custom-house books, I think, it is
now generally acknowledged, are a very uncertain criterion, on account of
the inaccuracy of the valuation at which the greater part of goods are
rated in them. The course of exchange is, perhaps, almost equally so.
When the exchange between two places, such as London and Paris, is at par,
it is said to be a sign that the debts due from London to Paris are
compensated by those due from Paris to London. On the contrary, when a
premium is paid at London for a bill upon Paris, it is said to be a sign
that the debts due from London to Paris are not compensated by those due
from Paris to London, but that a balance in money must be sent out from
the latter place; for the risk, trouble, and expense, of exporting which,
the premium is both demanded and given. But the ordinary state of debt and
credit between those two cities must necessarily be regulated, it is said,
by the ordinary course of their dealings with one another. When neither of
them imports from from other to a greater amount than it exports to that
other, the debts and credits of each may compensate one another. But when
one of them imports from the other to a greater value than it exports to
that other, the former necessarily becomes indebted to the latter in a
greater sum than the latter becomes indebted to it: the debts and credits
of each do not compensate one another, and money must be sent out from
that place of which the debts overbalance the credits. The ordinary course
of exchange, therefore, being an indication of the ordinary state of debt
and credit between two places, must likewise be an indication of the
ordinary course of their exports and imports, as these necessarily
regulate that state.
But though the ordinary course of exchange shall be allowed to be a
sufficient indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between any
two places, it would not from thence follow, that the balance of trade was
in favour of that place which had the ordinary state of debt and credit in
its favour. The ordinary state of debt and credit between any two places
is not always entirely regulated by the ordinary course of their dealings
with one another, but is often influenced by that of the dealings of
either with many other places. If it is usual, for example, for the
merchants of England to pay for the goods which they buy of Hamburg,
Dantzic, Riga, etc. by bills upon Holland, the ordinary state of debt and
credit between England and Holland will not be regulated entirely by the
ordinary course of the dealings of those two countries with one another,
but will be influenced by that of the dealings in England with those other
places. England may be obliged to send out every year money to Holland,
though its annual exports to that country may exceed very much the annual
value of its imports from thence, and though what is called the balance of
trade may be very much in favour of England.
In the way, besides, in which the par of exchange has hitherto been
computed, the ordinary course of exchange can afford no sufficient
indication that the ordinary state of debt and credit is in favour of that
country which seems to have, or which is supposed to have, the ordinary
course of exchange in its favour; or, in other words, the real exchange
may be, and in fact often is, so very different from the computed one,
that, from the course of the latter, no certain conclusion can, upon many
occasions, be drawn concerning that of the former.
When for a sum or money paid in England, containing, according to the
standard of the English mint, a certain number of ounces of pure silver,
you receive a bill for a sum of money to be paid in France, containing,
according to the standard of the French mint, an equal number of ounces of
pure silver, exchange is said to be at par between England and France.
When you pay more, you are supposed to give a premium, and exchange is
said to be against England, and in favour of France. When you pay less,
you are supposed to get a premium, and exchange is said to be against
France, and in favour of England.
But, first, We cannot always judge of the value of the current money of
different countries by the standard of their respective mints. In some it
is more, in others it is less worn, clipt, and otherwise degenerated from
that standard. But the value of the current coin of every country,
compared with that of any other country, is in proportion, not to the
quantity of pure silver which it ought to contain, but to that which it
actually does contain. Before the reformation of the silver coin in King
William’s time, exchange between England and Holland, computed in the
usual manner, according to the standard of their respective mints, was
five-and twenty per cent. against England. But the value of the current
coin of England, as we learn from Mr Lowndes, was at that time rather more
than five-and-twenty per cent. below its standard value. The real
exchange, therefore, may even at that time have been in favour of England,
notwithstanding the computed exchange was so much against it; a smaller
number or ounces of pure silver, actually paid in England, may have
purchased a bill for a greater number of ounces of pure silver to be paid
in Holland, and the man who was supposed to give, may in reality have got
the premium. The French coin was, before the late reformation of the
English gold coin, much less wore than the English, and was perhaps two or
three per cent. nearer its standard. If the computed exchange with France,
therefore, was not more than two or three per cent. against England, the
real exchange might have been in its favour. Since the reformation of the
gold coin, the exchange has been constantly in favour of England, and
against France.
Secondly, In some countries the expense of coinage is defrayed by the
government; in others, it is defrayed by the private people, who carry
their bullion to the mint, and the government even derives some revenue
from the coinage. In England it is defrayed by the government; and if you
carry a pound weight of standard silver to the mint, you get back
sixty-two shillings, containing a pound weight of the like standard
silver. In France a duty of eight per cent. is deducted for the coinage,
which not only defrays the expense of it, but affords a small revenue to
the government. In England, as the coinage costs nothing, the current coin
can never be much more valuable than the quantity of bullion which it
actually contains. In France, the workmanship, as you pay for it, adds to
the value, in the same manner as to that of wrought plate. A sum of French
money, therefore, containing an equal weight of pure silver, is more
valuable than a sum of English money containing an equal weight of pure
silver, and must require more bullion, or other commodities, to purchase
it. Though the current coin of the two countries, therefore, were equally
near the standards of their respective mints, a sum of English money could
not well purchase a sum of French money containing an equal number of
ounces of pure silver, nor, consequently, a bill upon France for such a
sum. If, for such a bill, no more additional money was paid than what was
sufficient to compensate the expense of the French coinage, the real
exchange might be at par between the two countries; their debts and
credits might mutually compensate one another, while the computed exchange
was considerably in favour of France. If less than this was paid, the real
exchange might be in favour of England, while the computed was in favour
of France.
Thirdly, and lastly, In some places, as at Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice,
etc. foreign bills of exchange are paid in what they call bank money;
while in others, as at London, Lisbon, Antwerp, Leghorn, etc. they are
paid in the common currency of the country. What is called bank money, is
always of more value than the same nominal sum of common currency. A
thousand guilders in the bank of Amsterdam, for example, are of more value
than a thousand guilders of Amsterdam currency. The difference between
them is called the agio of the bank, which at Amsterdam is generally about
five per cent. Supposing the current money of the two countries equally
near to the standard of their respective mints, and that the one pays
foreign bills in this common currency, while the other pays them in bank
money, it is evident that the computed exchange may be in favour of that
which pays in bank money, though the real exchange should be in favour of
that which pays in current money; for the same reason that the computed
exchange may be in favour of that which pays in better money, or in money
nearer to its own standard, though the real exchange should be in favour
of that which pays in worse. The computed exchange, before the late
reformation of the gold coin, was generally against London with Amsterdam,
Hamburg, Venice, and, I believe, with all other places which pay in what
is called bank money. It will by no means follow, however, that the real
exchange was against it. Since the reformation of the gold coin, it has
been in favour of London, even with those places. The computed exchange
has generally been in favour of London with Lisbon, Antwerp, Leghorn, and,
if you except France, I believe with most other parts of Europe that pay
in common currency; and it is not improbable that the real exchange was so
too.
Digression concerning Banks of Deposit, particularly concerning that of
Amsterdam.
The currency of a great state, such as France or England, generally
consists almost entirely of its own coin. Should this currency, therefore,
be at any time worn, clipt, or otherwise degraded below its standard
value, the state, by a reformation of its coin, can effectually
re-establish its currency. But the currency of a small state, such as
Genoa or Hamburg, can seldom consist altogether in its own coin, but must
be made up, in a great measure, of the coins of all the neighbouring
states with which its inhabitants have a continual intercourse. Such a
state, therefore, by reforming its coin, will not always be able to reform
its currency. If foreign bills of exchange are paid in this currency, the
uncertain value of any sum, of what is in its own nature so uncertain,
must render the exchange always very much against such a state, its
currency being in all foreign states necessarily valued even below what it
is worth.
In order to remedy the inconvenience to which this disadvantageous
exchange must have subjected their merchants, such small states, when they
began to attend to the interest of trade, have frequently enacted that
foreign bills of exchange of a certain value should be paid, not in common
currency, but by an order upon, or by a transfer in the books of a certain
bank, established upon the credit, and under the protection of the state,
this bank being always obliged to pay, in good and true money, exactly
according to the standard of the state. The banks of Venice, Genoa,
Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Nuremberg, seem to have been all originally
established with this view, though some of them may have afterwards been
made subservient to other purposes. The money of such banks, being better
than the common currency of the country, necessarily bore an agio, which
was greater or smaller, according as the currency was supposed to be more
or less degraded below the standard of the state. The agio of the bank of
Hamburg, for example, which is said to be commonly about fourteen per
cent. is the supposed difference between the good standard money of the
state, and the clipt, worn, and diminished currency, poured into it from
all the neighbouring states.
Before 1609, the great quantity of clipt and worn foreign coin which the
extensive trade of Amsterdam brought from all parts of Europe, reduced the
value of its currency about nine per cent. below that of good money fresh
from the mint. Such money no sooner appeared, than it was melted down or
carried away, as it always is in such circumstances. The merchants, with
plenty of currency, could not always find a sufficient quantity of good
money to pay their bills of exchange; and the value of those bills, in
spite of several regulations which were made to prevent it, became in a
great measure uncertain.
In order to remedy these inconveniencies, a bank was established in 1609,
under the guarantee of the city. This bank received both foreign coin, and
the light and worn coin of the country, at its real intrinsic value in the
good standard money of the country, deducting only so much as was
necessary for defraying the expense of coinage and the other necessary
expense of management. For the value which remained after this small
deduction was made, it gave a credit in its books. This credit was called
bank money, which, as it represented money exactly according to the
standard of the mint, was always of the same real value, and intrinsically
worth more than current money. It was at the same time enacted, that all
bills drawn upon or negotiated at Amsterdam, of the value of 600 guilders
and upwards, should be paid in bank money, which at once took away all
uncertainty in the value of those bills. Every merchant, in consequence of
this regulation, was obliged to keep an account with the bank, in order to
pay his foreign bills of exchange, which necessarily occasioned a certain
demand for bank money.
Bank money, over and above both its intrinsic superiority to currency, and
the additional value which this demand necessarily gives it, has likewise
some other advantages, It is secure from fire, robbery, and other
accidents; the city of Amsterdam is bound for it; it can be paid away by a
simple transfer, without the trouble of counting, or the risk of
transporting it from one place to another. In consequence of those
different advantages, it seems from the beginning to have borne an agio;
and it is generally believed that all the money originally deposited in
the bank, was allowed to remain there, nobody caring to demand payment of
a debt which he could sell for a premium in the market. By demanding
payment of the bank, the owner of a bank credit would lose this premium.
As a shilling fresh from the mint will buy no more goods in the market
than one of our common worn shillings, so the good and true money which
might be brought from the coffers of the bank into those of a private
person, being mixed and confounded with the common currency of the
country, would be of no more value than that currency, from which it could
no longer be readily distinguished. While it remained in the coffers of
the bank, its superiority was known and ascertained. When it had come into
those of a private person, its superiority could not well be ascertained
without more trouble than perhaps the difference was worth. By being
brought from the coffers of the bank, besides, it lost all the other
advantages of bank money; its security, its easy and safe transferability,
its use in paying foreign bills of exchange. Over and above all this, it
could not be brought from those coffers, as will appear by and by, without
previously paying for the keeping.
Those deposits of coin, or those deposits which the bank was bound to
restore in coin, constituted the original capital of the bank, or the
whole value of what was represented by what is called bank money. At
present they are supposed to constitute but a very small part of it. In
order to facilitate the trade in bullion, the bank has been for these many
years in the practice of giving credit in its books, upon deposits of gold
and silver bullion. This credit is generally about five per cent. below
the mint price of such bullion. The bank grants at the same time what is
called a recipice or receipt, entitling the person who makes the deposit,
or the bearer, to take out the bullion again at any time within six
months, upon transferring to the bank a quantity of bank money equal to
that for which credit had been given in its books when the deposit was
made, and upon paying one-fourth per cent. for the keeping, if the deposit
was in silver; and one-half per cent. if it was in gold; but at the same
time declaring, that in default of such payment, and upon the expiration
of this term, the deposit should belong to the bank, at the price at which
it had been received, or for which credit had been given in the transfer
books. What is thus paid for the keeping of the deposit may be considered
as a sort of warehouse rent; and why this warehouse rent should be so much
dearer for gold than for silver, several different reasons have been
assigned. The fineness of gold, it has been said, is more difficult to be
ascertained than that of silver. Frauds are more easily practised, and
occasion a greater loss in the most precious metal. Silver, besides, being
the standard metal, the state, it has been said, wishes to encourage more
the making of deposits of silver than those of gold.
Deposits of bullion are most commonly made when the price is somewhat
lower than ordinary, and they are taken out again when it happens to rise.
In Holland the market price of bullion is generally above the mint price,
for the same reason that it was so in England before the late reformation
of the gold coin. The difference is said to be commonly from about six to
sixteen stivers upon the mark, or eight ounces of silver, of eleven parts
of fine and one part alloy. The bank price, or the credit which the bank
gives for the deposits of such silver (when made in foreign coin, of which
the fineness is well known and ascertained, such as Mexico dollars), is
twenty-two guilders the mark: the mint price is about twenty-three
guilders, and the market price is from twenty-three guilders six, to
twenty-three guilders sixteen stivers, or from two to three per cent.
above the mint price.
The following are the prices at which the bank of Amsterdam at present
{September 1775} receives bullion and coin of different kinds:
SILVER
Mexico dollars ................. 22 Guilders / mark
French crowns .................. 22
English silver coin............. 22
Mexico dollars, new coin........ 21 10
Ducatoons....................... 3 0
Rix-dollars..................... 2 8
Bar silver, containing 11-12ths fine silver, 21 Guilders / mark, and in
this proportion down to 1-4th fine, on which 5 guilders are given. Fine
bars,................. 28 Guilders / mark.
GOLD
Portugal coin................. 310 Guilders / mark
Guineas....................... 310
Louis d’ors, new.............. 310
Ditto old.............. 300
New ducats.................... 4 19 8 per ducat
Bar or ingot gold is received in proportion to its fineness, compared with
the above foreign gold coin. Upon fine bars the bank gives 340 per mark.
In general, however, something more is given upon coin of a known
fineness, than upon gold and silver bars, of which the fineness cannot be
ascertained but by a process of melting and assaying.
The proportions between the bank price, the mint price, and the market
price of gold bullion, are nearly the same. A person can generally sell
his receipt for the difference between the mint price of bullion and the
market price. A receipt for bullion is almost always worth something, and
it very seldom happens, therefore, that anybody suffers his receipts to
expire, or allows his bullion to fall to the bank at the price at which it
had been received, either by not taking it out before the end of the six
months, or by neglecting to pay one fourth or one half per cent. in order
to obtain a new receipt for another six months. This, however, though it
happens seldom, is said to happen sometimes, and more frequently with
regard to gold than with regard to silver, on account of the higher
warehouse rent which is paid for the keeping of the more precious metal.
The person who, by making a deposit of bullion, obtains both a bank credit
and a receipt, pays his bills of exchange as they become due, with his
bank credit; and either sells or keeps his receipt, according as he judges
that the price of bullion is likely to rise or to fall. The receipt and
the bank credit seldom keep long together, and there is no occasion that
they should. The person who has a receipt, and who wants to take out
bullion, finds always plenty of bank credits, or bank money, to buy at the
ordinary price, and the person who has bank money, and wants to take out
bullion, finds receipts always in equal abundance.
The owners of bank credits, and the holders of receipts, constitute two
different sorts of creditors against the bank. The holder of a receipt
cannot draw out the bullion for which it is granted, without re-assigning
to the bank a sum of bank money equal to the price at which the bullion
had been received. If he has no bank money of his own, he must purchase it
of those who have it. The owner of bank money cannot draw out bullion,
without producing to the bank receipts for the quantity which he wants. If
he has none of his own, he must buy them of those who have them. The
holder of a receipt, when he purchases bank money, purchases the power of
taking out a quantity of bullion, of which the mint price is five per
cent. above the bank price. The agio of five per cent. therefore, which he
commonly pays for it, is paid, not for an imaginary, but for a real value.
The owner of bank money, when he purchases a receipt, purchases the power
of taking out a quantity of bullion, of which the market price is commonly
from two to three per cent. above the mint price. The price which he pays
for it, therefore, is paid likewise for a real value. The price of the
receipt, and the price of the bank money, compound or make up between them
the full value or price of the bullion.
Upon deposits of the coin current in the country, the bank grant receipts
likewise, as well as bank credits; but those receipts are frequently of no
value and will bring no price in the market. Upon ducatoons, for example,
which in the currency pass for three guilders three stivers each, the bank
gives a credit of three guilders only, or five per cent. below their
current value. It grants a receipt likewise, entitling the bearer to take
out the number of ducatoons deposited at any time within six months, upon
paying one fourth per cent. for the keeping. This receipt will frequently
bring no price in the market. Three guilders, bank money, generally sell
in the market for three guilders three stivers, the full value of the
ducatoons, if they were taken out of the bank; and before they can be
taken out, one-fourth per cent. must be paid for the keeping, which would
be mere loss to the holder of the receipt. If the agio of the bank,
however, should at any time fall to three per cent. such receipts might
bring some price in the market, and might sell for one and three-fourths
per cent. But the agio of the bank being now generally about five per
cent. such receipts are frequently allowed to expire, or, as they express
it, to fall to the bank. The receipts which are given for deposits of gold
ducats fall to it yet more frequently, because a higher warehouse rent, or
one half per cent. must be paid for the keeping of them, before they can
be taken out again. The five per cent. which the bank gains, when deposits
either of coin or bullion are allowed to fall to it, maybe considered as
the warehouse rent for the perpetual keeping of such deposits.
The sum of bank money, for which the receipts are expired, must be very
considerable. It must comprehend the whole original capital of the bank,
which, it is generally supposed, has been allowed to remain there from the
time it was first deposited, nobody caring either to renew his receipt, or
to take out his deposit, as, for the reasons already assigned, neither the
one nor the other could be done without loss. But whatever may be the
amount of this sum, the proportion which it bears to the whole mass of
bank money is supposed to be very small. The bank of Amsterdam has, for
these many years past, been the great warehouse of Europe for bullion, for
which the receipts are very seldom allowed to expire, or, as they express
it, to fall to the bank. The far greater part of the bank money, or of the
credits upon the books of the bank, is supposed to have been created, for
these many years past, by such deposits, which the dealers in bullion are
continually both making and withdrawing.
No demand can be made upon the bank, but by means of a recipice or
receipt. The smaller mass of bank money, for which the receipts are
expired, is mixed and confounded with the much greater mass for which they
are still in force; so that, though there may be a considerable sum of
bank money, for which there are no receipts, there is no specific sum or
portion of it which may not at any time be demanded by one. The bank
cannot be debtor to two persons for the same thing; and the owner of bank
money who has no receipt, cannot demand payment of the bank till he buys
one. In ordinary and quiet times, he can find no difficulty in getting one
to buy at the market price, which generally corresponds with the price at
which he can sell the coin or bullion it entitles him to take out of the
bank.
It might be otherwise during a public calamity; an invasion, for example,
such as that of the French in 1672. The owners of bank money being then
all eager to draw it out of the bank, in order to have it in their own
keeping, the demand for receipts might raise their price to an exorbitant
height. The holders of them might form extravagant expectations, and,
instead of two or three per cent. demand half the bank money for which
credit had been given upon the deposits that the receipts had respectively
been granted for. The enemy, informed of the constitution of the bank,
might even buy them up, in order to prevent the carrying away of the
treasure. In such emergencies, the bank, it is supposed, would break
through its ordinary rule of making payment only to the holders of
receipts. The holders of receipts, who had no bank money, must have
received within two or three per cent. of the value of the deposit for
which their respective receipts had been granted. The bank, therefore, it
is said, would in this case make no scruple of paying, either with money
or bullion, the full value of what the owners of bank money, who could get
no receipts, were credited for in its books; paying, at the same time, two
or three per cent. to such holders of receipts as had no bank money, that
being the whole value which, in this state of things, could justly be
supposed due to them.
Even in ordinary and quiet times, it is the interest of the holders of
receipts to depress the agio, in order either to buy bank money (and
consequently the bullion which their receipts would then enable them to
take out of the bank ) so much cheaper, or to sell their receipts to those
who have bank money, and who want to take out bullion, so much dearer; the
price of a receipt being generally equal to the difference between the
market price of bank money and that of the coin or bullion for which the
receipt had been granted. It is the interest of the owners of bank money,
on the contrary, to raise the agio, in order either to sell their bank
money so much dearer, or to buy a receipt so much cheaper. To prevent the
stock-jobbing tricks which those opposite interests might sometimes
occasion, the bank has of late years come to the resolution, to sell at
all times bank money for currency at five per cent. agio, and to buy it in
again at four per cent. agio. In consequence of this resolution, the agio
can never either rise above five, or sink below four per cent.; and the
proportion between the market price of bank and that of current money is
kept at all times very near the proportion between their intrinsic values.
Before this resolution was taken, the market price of bank money used
sometimes to rise so high as nine per cent. agio, and sometimes to sink so
low as par, according as opposite interests happened to influence the
market.
The bank of Amsterdam professes to lend out no part of what is deposited
with it, but for every guilder for which it gives credit in its books, to
keep in its repositories the value of a guilder either in money or
bullion. That it keeps in its repositories all the money or bullion for
which there are receipts in force for which it is at all times liable to
be called upon, and which in reality is continually going from it, and
returning to it again, cannot well be doubted. But whether it does so
likewise with regard to that part of its capital for which the receipts
are long ago expired, for which, in ordinary and quiet times, it cannot be
called upon, and which, in reality, is very likely to remain with it for
ever, or as long as the states of the United Provinces subsist, may
perhaps appear more uncertain. At Amsterdam, however, no point of faith is
better established than that, for every guilder circulated as bank money,
there is a correspondent guilder in gold or silver to be found in the
treasures of the bank. The city is guarantee that it should be so. The
bank is under the direction of the four reigning burgomasters who are
changed every year. Each new set of burgomasters visits the treasure,
compares it with the books, receives it upon oath, and delivers it over,
with the same awful solemnity to the set which succeeds; and in that sober
and religious country, oaths are not yet disregarded. A rotation of this
kind seems alone a sufficient security against any practices which cannot
be avowed. Amidst all the revolutions which faction has ever occasioned in
the government of Amsterdam, the prevailing party has at no time accused
their predecessors of infidelity in the administration of the bank. No
accusation could have affected more deeply the reputation and fortune of
the disgraced party; and if such an accusation could have been supported,
we may be assured that it would have been brought. In 1672, when the
French king was at Utrecht, the bank of Amsterdam paid so readily, as left
no doubt of the fidelity with which it had observed its engagements. Some
of the pieces which were then brought from its repositories, appeared to
have been scorched with the fire which happened in the town-house soon
after the bank was established. Those pieces, therefore, must have lain
there from that time.
What may be the amount of the treasure in the bank, is a question which
has long employed the speculations of the curious. Nothing but conjecture
can be offered concerning it. It is generally reckoned, that there are
about 2000 people who keep accounts with the bank; and allowing them to
have, one with another, the value of £1500 sterling lying upon their
respective accounts (a very large allowance), the whole quantity of bank
money, and consequently of treasure in the bank, will amount to about
£3,000,000 sterling, or, at eleven guilders the pound sterling, 33,000,000
of guilders; a great sum, and sufficient to carry on a very extensive
circulation, but vastly below the extravagant ideas which some people have
formed of this treasure.
The city of Amsterdam derives a considerable revenue from the bank.
Besides what may be called the warehouse rent above mentioned, each
person, upon first opening an account with the bank, pays a fee of ten
guilders; and for every new account, three guilders three stivers; for
every transfer, two stivers; and if the transfer is for less than 300
guilders, six stivers, in order to discourage the multiplicity of small
transactions. The person who neglects to balance his account twice in the
year, forfeits twenty-five guilders. The person who orders a transfer for
more than is upon his account, is obliged to pay three per cent. for the
sum overdrawn, and his order is set aside into the bargain. The bank is
supposed, too, to make a considerable profit by the sale of the foreign
coin or bullion which sometimes falls to it by the expiring of receipts,
and which is always kept till it can be sold with advantage. It makes a
profit, likewise, by selling bank money at five per cent. agio, and buying
it in at four. These different emoluments amount to a good deal more than
what is necessary for paying the salaries of officers, and defraying the
expense of management. What is paid for the keeping of bullion upon
receipts, is alone supposed to amount to a neat annual revenue of between
150,000 and 200,000 guilders. Public utility, however, and not revenue,
was the original object of this institution. Its object was to relieve the
merchants from the inconvenience of a disadvantageous exchange. The
revenue which has arisen from it was unforeseen, and may be considered as
accidental. But it is now time to return from this long digression, into
which I have been insensibly led, in endeavouring to explain the reasons
why the exchange between the countries which pay in what is called bank
money, and those which pay in common currency, should generally appear to
be in favour of the former, and against the latter. The former pay in a
species of money, of which the intrinsic value is always the same, and
exactly agreeable to the standard of their respective mints; the latter is
a species of money, of which the intrinsic value is continually varying,
and is almost always more or less below that standard.
PART II.—Of the Unreasonableness of those extraordinary Restraints,
upon other Principles.
In the foregoing part of this chapter, I have endeavoured to show, even
upon the principles of the commercial system, how unnecessary it is to lay
extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods from those
countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be
disadvantageous.
Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the
balance of trade, upon which, not only these restraints, but almost all
the other regulations of commerce, are founded. When two places trade with
one another, this doctrine supposes that, if the balance be even, neither
of them either loses or gains; but if it leans in any degree to one side,
that one of them loses, and the other gains, in proportion to its
declension from the exact equilibrium. Both suppositions are false. A
trade, which is forced by means of bounties and monopolies, may be, and
commonly is, disadvantageous to the country in whose favour it is meant to
be established, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter. But that trade
which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried on
between any two places, is always advantageous, though not always equally
so, to both.
By advantage or gain, I understand, not the increase of the quantity of
gold and silver, but that of the exchangeable value of the annual produce
of the land and labour of the country, or the increase of the annual
revenue of its inhabitants.
If the balance be even, and if the trade between the two places consist
altogether in the exchange of their native commodities, they will, upon
most occasions, not only both gain, but they will gain equally, or very
nearly equally; each will, in this case, afford a market for a part of the
surplus produce of the other; each will replace a capital which had been
employed in raising and preparing for the market this part of the surplus
produce of the other, and which had been distributed among, and given
revenue and maintenance to, a certain number of its inhabitants. Some part
of the inhabitants of each, therefore, will directly derive their revenue
and maintenance from the other. As the commodities exchanged, too, are
supposed to be of equal value, so the two capitals employed in the trade
will, upon most occasions, be equal, or very nearly equal; and both being
employed in raising the native commodities of the two countries, the
revenue and maintenance which their distribution will afford to the
inhabitants of each will be equal, or very nearly equal. This revenue and
maintenance, thus mutually afforded, will be greater or smaller, in
proportion to the extent of their dealings. If these should annually
amount to £100,000, for example, or to £1,000,000, on each side, each of
them will afford an annual revenue, in the one case, of £100,000, and, in
the other, of £1,000,000, to the inhabitants of the other.
If their trade should be of such a nature, that one of them exported to
the other nothing but native commodities, while the returns of that other
consisted altogether in foreign goods; the balance, in this case, would
still be supposed even, commodities being paid for with commodities. They
would, in this case too, both gain, but they would not gain equally; and
the inhabitants of the country which exported nothing but native
commodities, would derive the greatest revenue from the trade. If England,
for example, should import from France nothing but the native commodities
of that country, and not having such commodities of its own as were in
demand there, should annually repay them by sending thither a large
quantity of foreign goods, tobacco, we shall suppose, and East India
goods; this trade, though it would give some revenue to the inhabitants of
both countries, would give more to those of France than to those of
England. The whole French capital annually employed in it would annually
be distributed among the people of France; but that part of the English
capital only, which was employed in producing the English commodities with
which those foreign goods were purchased, would be annually distributed
among the people of England. The greater part of it would replace the
capitals which had been employed in Virginia, Indostan, and China, and
which had given revenue and maintenance to the inhabitants of those
distant countries. If the capitals were equal, or nearly equal, therefore,
this employment of the French capital would augment much more the revenue
of the people of France, than that of the English capital would the
revenue of the people of England. France would, in this case, carry on a
direct foreign trade of consumption with England; whereas England would
carry on a round-about trade of the same kind with France. The different
effects of a capital employed in the direct, and of one employed in the
round-about foreign trade of consumption, have already been fully
explained.
There is not, probably, between any two countries, a trade which consists
altogether in the exchange, either of native commodities on both sides, or
of native commodities on one side, and of foreign goods on the other.
Almost all countries exchange with one another, partly native and partly
foreign goods. That country, however, in whose cargoes there is the
greatest proportion of native, and the least of foreign goods, will always
be the principal gainer.
If it was not with tobacco and East India goods, but with gold and silver,
that England paid for the commodities annually imported from France, the
balance, in this case, would be supposed uneven, commodities not being
paid for with commodities, but with gold and silver. The trade, however,
would in this case, as in the foregoing, give some revenue to the
inhabitants of both countries, but more to those of France than to those
of England. It would give some revenue to those of England. The capital
which had been employed in producing the English goods that purchased this
gold and silver, the capital which had been distributed among, and given
revenue to, certain inhabitants of England, would thereby be replaced, and
enabled to continue that employment. The whole capital of England would no
more be diminished by this exportation of gold and silver, than by the
exportation of an equal value of any other goods. On the contrary, it
would, in most cases, be augmented. No goods are sent abroad but those for
which the demand is supposed to be greater abroad than at home, and of
which the returns, consequently, it is expected, will be of more value at
home than the commodities exported. If the tobacco which in England is
worth only £100,000, when sent to France, will purchase wine which is in
England worth £110,000, the exchange will augment the capital of England
by £10,000. If £100,000 of English gold, in the same manner, purchase
French wine, which in England is worth £110,000, this exchange will
equally augment the capital of England by £10,000. As a merchant, who has
£110,000 worth of wine in his cellar, is a richer man than he who has only
£100,000 worth of tobacco in his warehouse, so is he likewise a richer man
than he who has only £100,000 worth of gold in his coffers. He can put
into motion a greater quantity of industry, and give revenue, maintenance,
and employment, to a greater number of people, than either of the other
two. But the capital of the country is equal to the capital of all its
different inhabitants; and the quantity of industry which can be annually
maintained in it is equal to what all those different capitals can
maintain. Both the capital of the country, therefore, and the quantity of
industry which can be annually maintained in it, must generally be
augmented by this exchange. It would, indeed, be more advantageous for
England that it could purchase the wines of France with its own hardware
and broad cloth, than with either the tobacco of Virginia, or the gold and
silver of Brazil and Peru. A direct foreign trade of consumption is always
more advantageous than a round-about one. But a round-about foreign trade
of consumption, which is carried on with gold and silver, does not seem to
be less advantageous than any other equally round-about one. Neither is a
country which has no mines, more likely to be exhausted of gold and silver
by this annual exportation of those metals, than one which does not grow
tobacco by the like annual exportation of that plant. As a country which
has wherewithal to buy tobacco will never be long in want of it, so
neither will one be long in want of gold and silver which has wherewithal
to purchase those metals.
It is a losing trade, it is said, which a workman carries on with the
alehouse; and the trade which a manufacturing nation would naturally carry
on with a wine country, may be considered as a trade of the same nature. I
answer, that the trade with the alehouse is not necessarily a losing
trade. In its own nature it is just as advantageous as any other, though,
perhaps, somewhat more liable to be abused. The employment of a brewer,
and even that of a retailer of fermented liquors, are as necessary
divisions of labour as any other. It will generally be more advantageous
for a workman to buy of the brewer the quantity he has occasion for, than
to brew it himself; and if he is a poor workman, it will generally be more
advantageous for him to buy it by little and little of the retailer, than
a large quantity of the brewer. He may no doubt buy too much of either, as
he may of any other dealers in his neighbourhood; of the butcher, if he is
a glutton; or of the draper, if he affects to be a beau among his
companions. It is advantageous to the great body of workmen,
notwithstanding, that all these trades should be free, though this freedom
may be abused in all of them, and is more likely to be so, perhaps, in
some than in others. Though individuals, besides, may sometimes ruin their
fortunes by an excessive consumption of fermented liquors, there seems to
be no risk that a nation should do so. Though in every country there are
many people who spend upon such liquors more than they can afford, there
are always many more who spend less. It deserves to be remarked, too, that
if we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not
of drunkenness, but of sobriety. The inhabitants of the wine countries are
in general the soberest people of Europe; witness the Spaniards, the
Italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces of France. People
are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare. Nobody affects
the character of liberality and good fellowship, by being profuse of a
liquor which is as cheap as small beer. On the contrary, in the countries
which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where
wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice, as
among the northern nations, and all those who live between the tropics,
the negroes, for example on the coast of Guinea. When a French regiment
comes from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is
somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap,
the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at first debauched
by the cheapness and novelty of good wine; but after a few months
residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the
inhabitants. Were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises upon
malt, beer, and ale, to be taken away all at once, it might, in the same
manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and temporary
drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which would
probably be soon followed by a permanent and almost universal sobriety. At
present, drunkenness is by no means the vice of people of fashion, or of
those who can easily afford the most expensive liquors. A gentleman drunk
with ale has scarce ever been seen among us. The restraints upon the wine
trade in Great Britain, besides, do not so much seem calculated to hinder
the people from going, if I may say so, to the alehouse, as from going
where they can buy the best and cheapest liquor. They favour the wine
trade of Portugal, and discourage that of France. The Portuguese, it is
said, indeed, are better customers for our manufactures than the French,
and should therefore be encouraged in preference to them. As they give us
their custom, it is pretended we should give them ours. The sneaking arts
of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the
conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who
make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader
purchases his goods always where they are cheapest and best, without
regard to any little interest of this kind.
By such maxims as these, however, nations have been taught that their
interest consisted in beggaring all their neighbours. Each nation has been
made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations
with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss.
Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations as among individuals,
a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of
discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has
not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the
repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and
manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an
ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can
scarce admit of a remedy: but the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit,
of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the
rulers of mankind, though it cannot, perhaps, be corrected, may very
easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of anybody but
themselves.
That it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both invented and
propagated this doctrine, cannot be doubted and they who first taught it,
were by no means such fools as they who believed it. In every country it
always is, and must be, the interest of the great body of the people, to
buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is
so very manifest, that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it;
nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested
sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of
mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of
the great body of the people. As it is the interest of the freemen of a
corporation to hinder the rest of the inhabitants from employing any
workmen but themselves; so it is the interest of the merchants and
manufacturers of every country to secure to themselves the monopoly of the
home market. Hence, in Great Britain, and in most other European
countries, the extraordinary duties upon almost all goods imported by
alien merchants. Hence the high duties and prohibitions upon all those
foreign manufactures which can come into competition with our own. Hence,
too, the extraordinary restraints upon the importation of almost all sorts
of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed
to be disadvantageous; that is, from those against whom national animosity
happens ta be most violently inflamed.
The wealth of neighbouring nations, however, though dangerous in war and
politics, is certainly advantageous in trade. In a state of hostility, it
may enable our enemies to maintain fleets and armies superior to our own;
but in a state of peace and commerce it must likewise enable them to
exchange with us to a greater value, and to afford a better market, either
for the immediate produce of our own industry, or for whatever is
purchased with that produce. As a rich man is likely to be a better
customer to the industrious people in his neighbourhood, than a poor, so
is likewise a rich nation. A rich man, indeed, who is himself a
manufacturer, is a very dangerous neighbour to all those who deal in the
same way. All the rest of the neighbourhood, however, by far the greatest
number, profit by the good market which his expense affords them. They
even profit by his underselling the poorer workmen who deal in the same
way with him. The manufacturers of a rich nation, in the same manner, may
no doubt be very dangerous rivals to those of their neighbours. This very
competition, however, is advantageous to the great body of the people, who
profit greatly, besides, by the good market which the great expense of
such a nation affords them in every other way. Private people, who want to
make a fortune, never think of retiring to the remote and poor provinces
of the country, but resort either to the capital, or to some of the great
commercial towns. They know, that where little wealth circulates, there is
little to be got; but that where a great deal is in motion, some share of
it may fall to them. The same maxim which would in this manner direct the
common sense of one, or ten, or twenty individuals, should regulate the
judgment of one, or ten, or twenty millions, and should make a whole
nation regard the riches of its neighbours, as a probable cause and
occasion for itself to acquire riches. A nation that would enrich itself
by foreign trade, is certainly most likely to do so, when its neighbours
are all rich, industrious and commercial nations. A great nation,
surrounded on all sides by wandering savages and poor barbarians, might,
no doubt, acquire riches by the cultivation of its own lands, and by its
own interior commerce, but not by foreign trade. It seems to have been in
this manner that the ancient Egyptians and the modern Chinese acquired
their great wealth. The ancient Egyptians, it is said, neglected foreign
commerce, and the modern Chinese, it is known, hold it in the utmost
contempt, and scarce deign to afford it the decent protection of the laws.
The modern maxims of foreign commerce, by aiming at the impoverishment of
all our neighbours, so far as they are capable of producing their intended
effect, tend to render that very commerce insignificant and contemptible.
It is in consequence of these maxims, that the commerce between France and
England has, in both countries, been subjected to so many discouragements
and restraints. If those two countries, however, were to consider their
real interest, without either mercantile jealousy or national animosity,
the commerce of France might be more advantageous to Great Britain than
that of any other country, and, for the same reason, that of Great Britain
to France. France is the nearest neighbour to Great Britain. In the trade
between the southern coast of England and the northern and north-western
coast of France, the returns might be expected, in the same manner as in
the inland trade, four, five, or six times in the year. The capital,
therefore, employed in this trade could, in each of the two countries,
keep in motion four, five, or six times the quantity of industry, and
afford employment and subsistence to four, five, or six times the number
of people, which all equal capital could do in the greater part of the
other branches of foreign trade. Between the parts of France and Great
Britain most remote from one another, the returns might be expected, at
least, once in the year; and even this trade would so far be at least
equally advantageous, as the greater part of the other branches of our
foreign European trade. It would be, at least, three times more
advantageous than the boasted trade with our North American colonies, in
which the returns were seldom made in less than three years, frequently
not in less than four or five years. France, besides, is supposed to
contain 24,000,000 of inhabitants. Our North American colonies were never
supposed to contain more than 3,000,000; and France is a much richer
country than North America; though, on account of the more unequal
distribution of riches, there is much more poverty and beggary in the one
country than in the other. France, therefore, could afford a market at
least eight times more extensive, and, on account of the superior
frequency of the returns, four-and-twenty times more advantageous than
that which our North American colonies ever afforded. The trade of Great
Britain would be just as advantageous to France, and, in proportion to the
wealth, population, and proximity of the respective countries, would have
the same superiority over that which France carries on with her own
colonies. Such is the very great difference between that trade which the
wisdom of both nations has thought proper to discourage, and that which it
has favoured the most.
But the very same circumstances which would have rendered an open and free
commerce between the two countries so advantageous to both, have
occasioned the principal obstructions to that commerce. Being neighbours,
they are necessarily enemies, and the wealth and power of each becomes,
upon that account, more formidable to the other; and what would increase
the advantage of national friendship, serves only to inflame the violence
of national animosity. They are both rich and industrious nations; and the
merchants and manufacturers of each dread the competition of the skill and
activity of those of the other. Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both
inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity,
and the traders of both countries have announced, with all the passionate
confidence of interested falsehood, the certain ruin of each, in
consequence of that unfavourable balance of trade, which, they pretend,
would be the infallible effect of an unrestrained commerce with the other.
There is no commercial country in Europe, of which the approaching ruin
has not frequently been foretold by the pretended doctors of this system,
from all unfavourably balance of trade. After all the anxiety, however,
which they have excited about this, after all the vain attempts of almost
all trading nations to turn that balance in their own favour, and against
their neighbours, it does not appear that any one nation in Europe has
been, in any respect, impoverished by this cause. Every town and country,
on the contrary, in proportion as they have opened their ports to all
nations, instead of being ruined by this free trade, as the principles of
the commercial system would lead us to expect, have been enriched by it.
Though there are in Europe indeed, a few towns which, in same respects,
deserve the name of free ports, there is no country which does so.
Holland, perhaps, approaches the nearest to this character of any, though
still very remote from it; and Holland, it is acknowledged, not only
derives its whole wealth, but a great part of its necessary subsistence,
from foreign trade.
There is another balance, indeed, which has already been explained, very
different from the balance of trade, and which, according as it happens to
be either favourable or unfavourable, necessarily occasions the prosperity
or decay of every nation. This is the balance of the annual produce and
consumption. If the exchangeable value of the annual produce, it has
already been observed, exceeds that of the annual consumption, the capital
of the society must annually increase in proportion to this excess. The
society in this case lives within its revenue; and what is annually saved
out of its revenue, is naturally added to its capital, and employed so as
to increase still further the annual produce. If the exchangeable value of
the annual produce, on the contrary, fall short of the annual consumption,
the capital of the society must annually decay in proportion to this
deficiency. The expense of the society, in this case, exceeds its revenue,
and necessarily encroaches upon its capital. Its capital, therefore, must
necessarily decay, and, together with it, the exchangeable value of the
annual produce of its industry.
This balance of produce and consumption is entirely different from what is
called the balance of trade. It might take place in a nation which had no
foreign trade, but which was entirely separated from all the world. It may
take place in the whole globe of the earth, of which the wealth,
population, and improvement, may be either gradually increasing or
gradually decaying.
The balance of produce and consumption may be constantly in favour of a
nation, though what is called the balance of trade be generally against
it. A nation may import to a greater value than it exports for half a
century, perhaps, together; the gold and silver which comes into it during
all this time, may be all immediately sent out of it; its circulating coin
may gradually decay, different sorts of paper money being substituted in
its place, and even the debts, too, which it contracts in the principal
nations with whom it deals, may be gradually increasing; and yet its real
wealth, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its lands and
labour, may, during the same period, have been increasing in a much
greater proportion. The state of our North American colonies, and of the
trade which they carried on with Great Britain, before the commencement of
the present disturbances, {This paragraph was written in the year 1775.}
may serve as a proof that this is by no means an impossible supposition.
CHAPTER IV.
OF DRAWBACKS.
Merchants and manufacturers are not contented with the monopoly of the
home market, but desire likewise the most extensive foreign sale for their
goods. Their country has no jurisdiction in foreign nations, and therefore
can seldom procure them any monopoly there. They are generally obliged,
therefore, to content themselves with petitioning for certain
encouragements to exportation.
Of these encouragements, what are called drawbacks seem to be the most
reasonable. To allow the merchant to draw back upon exportation, either
the whole, or a part of whatever excise or inland duty is imposed upon
domestic industry, can never occasion the exportation of a greater
quantity of goods than what would have been exported had no duty been
imposed. Such encouragements do not tend to turn towards any particular
employment a greater share of the capital of the country, than what would
go to that employment of its own accord, but only to hinder the duty from
driving away any part of that share to other employments. They tend not to
overturn that balance which naturally establishes itself among all the
various employments of the society, but to hinder it from being overturned
by the duty. They tend not to destroy, but to preserve, what it is in most
cases advantageous to preserve, the natural division and distribution of
labour in the society.
The same thing may be said of the drawbacks upon the re-exportation of
foreign goods imported, which, in Great Britain, generally amount to by
much the largest part of the duty upon importation. By the second of the
rules, annexed to the act of parliament, which imposed what is now called
the old subsidy, every merchant, whether English or alien. was allowed to
draw back half that duty upon exportation; the English merchant, provided
the exportation took place within twelve months; the alien, provided it
took place within nine months. Wines, currants, and wrought silks, were
the only goods which did not fall within this rule, having other and more
advantageous allowances. The duties imposed by this act of parliament
were, at that time, the only duties upon the importation of foreign goods.
The term within which this, and all other drawbacks could be claimed, was
afterwards (by 7 Geo. I. chap. 21. sect. 10.) extended to three years.
The duties which have been imposed since the old subsidy, are, the greater
part of them, wholly drawn back upon exportation. This general rule,
however, is liable to a great number of exceptions; and the doctrine of
drawbacks has become a much less simple matter than it was at their first
institution.
Upon the exportation of some foreign goods, of which it was expected that
the importation would greatly exceed what was necessary for the home
consumption, the whole duties are drawn back, without retaining even half
the old subsidy. Before the revolt of our North American colonies, we had
the monopoly of the tobacco of Maryland and Virginia. We imported about
ninety-six thousand hogsheads, and the home consumption was not supposed
to exceed fourteen thousand. To facilitate the great exportation which was
necessary, in order to rid us of the rest, the whole duties were drawn
back, provided the exportation took place within three years.
We still have, though not altogether, yet very nearly, the monopoly of the
sugars of our West Indian islands. If sugars are exported within a year,
therefore, all the duties upon importation are drawn back; and if exported
within three years, all the duties, except half the old subsidy, which
still continues to be retained upon the exportation of the greater part of
goods. Though the importation of sugar exceeds a good deal what is
necessary for the home consumption, the excess is inconsiderable, in
comparison of what it used to be in tobacco.
Some goods, the particular objects of the jealousy of our own
manufacturers, are prohibited to be imported for home consumption. They
may, however, upon paying certain duties, be imported and warehoused for
exportation. But upon such exportation no part of these duties is drawn
back. Our manufacturers are unwilling, it seems, that even this restricted
importation should be encouraged, and are afraid lest some part of these
goods should be stolen out of the warehouse, and thus come into
competition with their own. It is under these regulations only that we can
import wrought silks, French cambrics and lawns, calicoes, painted,
printed, stained, or dyed, etc.
We are unwilling even to be the carriers of French goods, and choose
rather to forego a profit to ourselves than to suffer those whom we
consider as our enemies to make any profit by our means. Not only half the
old subsidy, but the second twenty-five per cent. is retained upon the
exportation of all French goods.
By the fourth of the rules annexed to the old subsidy, the drawback
allowed upon the exportation of all wines amounted to a great deal more
than half the duties which were at that time paid upon their importation;
and it seems at that time to have been the object of the legislature to
give somewhat more than ordinary encouragement to the carrying trade in
wine. Several of the other duties, too which were imposed either at the
same time or subsequent to the old subsidy, what is called the additional
duty, the new subsidy, the one-third and two-thirds subsidies, the impost
1692, the tonnage on wine, were allowed to be wholly drawn back upon
exportation. All those duties, however, except the additional duty and
impost 1692, being paid down in ready money upon importation, the interest
of so large a sum occasioned an expense, which made it unreasonable to
expect any profitable carrying trade in this article. Only a part,
therefore of the duty called the impost on wine, and no part of the
twenty-five pounds the ton upon French wines, or of the duties imposed in
1745, in 1763, and in 1778, were allowed to be drawn back upon
exportation. The two imposts of five per cent. imposed in 1779 and 1781,
upon all the former duties of customs, being allowed to be wholly drawn
back upon the exportation of all other goods, were likewise allowed to be
drawn back upon that of wine. The last duty that has been particularly
imposed upon wine, that of 1780, is allowed to be wholly drawn back; an
indulgence which, when so many heavy duties are retained, most probably
could never occasion the exportation of a single ton of wine. These rules
took place with regard to all places of lawful exportation, except the
British colonies in America.
The 15th Charles II, chap. 7, called an act for the encouragement of
trade, had given Great Britain the monopoly of supplying the colonies with
all the commodities of the growth or manufacture of Europe, and
consequently with wines. In a country of so extensive a coast as our North
American and West Indian colonies, where our authority was always so very
slender, and where the inhabitants were allowed to carry out in their own
ships their non-enumerated commodities, at first to all parts of Europe,
and afterwards to all parts of Europe south of Cape Finisterre, it is not
very probable that this monopoly could ever be much respected; and they
probably at all times found means of bringing back some cargo from the
countries to which they were allowed to carry out one. They seem, however,
to have found some difficulty in importing European wines from the places
of their growth; and they could not well import them from Great Britain,
where they were loaded with many heavy duties, of which a considerable
part was not drawn back upon exportation. Madeira wine, not being an
European commodity, could be imported directly into America and the West
Indies, countries which, in all their non-enumerated commodities, enjoyed
a free trade to the island of Madeira. These circumstances had probably
introduced that general taste for Madeira wine, which our officers found
established in all our colonies at the commencement of the war which began
in 1755, and which they brought back with them to the mother country,
where that wine had not been much in fashion before. Upon the conclusion
of that war, in 1763 (by the 4th Geo. III, chap. 15, sect. 12), all the
duties except £3, 10s. were allowed to be drawn back upon the exportation
to the colonies of all wines, except French wines, to the commerce and
consumption of which national prejudice would allow no sort of
encouragement. The period between the granting of this indulgence and the
revolt of our North American colonies, was probably too short to admit of
any considerable change in the customs of those countries.
The same act which, in the drawbacks upon all wines, except French wines,
thus favoured the colonies so much more than other countries, in those
upon the greater part of other commodities, favoured them much less. Upon
the exportation of the greater part of commodities to other countries,
half the old subsidy was drawn back. But this law enacted, that no part of
that duty should be drawn back upon the exportation to the colonies of any
commodities of the growth or manufacture either of Europe or the East
Indies, except wines, white calicoes, and muslins.
Drawbacks were, perhaps, originally granted for the encouragement of the
carrying trade, which, as the freight of the ship is frequently paid by
foreigners in money, was supposed to be peculiarly fitted for bringing
gold and silver into the country. But though the carrying trade certainly
deserves no peculiar encouragement, though the motive of the institution
was, perhaps, abundantly foolish, the institution itself seems reasonable
enough. Such drawbacks cannot force into this trade a greater share of the
capital of the country than what would have gone to it of its own accord,
had there been no duties upon importation; they only prevent its being
excluded altogether by those duties. The carrying trade, though it
deserves no preference, ought not to be precluded, but to be left free,
like all other trades. It is a necessary resource to those capitals which
cannot find employment, either in the agriculture or in the manufactures
of the country, either in its home trade, or in its foreign trade of
consumption.
The revenue of the customs, instead of suffering, profits from such
drawbacks, by that part of the duty which is retained. If the whole duties
had been retained, the foreign goods upon which they are paid could seldom
have been exported, nor consequently imported, for want of a market. The
duties, therefore, of which a part is retained, would never have been
paid.
These reasons seem sufficiently to justify drawbacks, and would justify
them, though the whole duties, whether upon the produce of domestic
industry or upon foreign goods, were always drawn back upon exportation.
The revenue of excise would, in this case indeed, suffer a little, and
that of the customs a good deal more; but the natural balance of industry,
the natural division and distribution of labour, which is always more or
less disturbed by such duties, would be more nearly re-established by such
a regulation.
These reasons, however, will justify drawbacks only upon exporting goods
to those countries which are altogether foreign and independent, not to
those in which our merchants and manufacturers enjoy a monopoly. A
drawback, for example, upon the exportation of European goods to our
American colonies, will not always occasion a greater exportation than
what would have taken place without it. By means of the monopoly which our
merchants and manufacturers enjoy there, the same quantity might
frequently, perhaps, be sent thither, though the whole duties were
retained. The drawback, therefore, may frequently be pure loss to the
revenue of excise and customs, without altering the state of the trade, or
rendering it in any respect more extensive. How far such drawbacks can be
justified as a proper encouragement to the industry of our colonies, or
how far it is advantageous to the mother country that they should be
exempted from taxes which are paid by all the rest of their
fellow-subjects, will appear hereafter, when I come to treat of colonies.
Drawbacks, however, it must always be understood, are useful only in those
cases in which the goods, for the exportation of which they are given, are
really exported to some foreign country, and not clandestinely re-imported
into our own. That some drawbacks, particularly those upon tobacco, have
frequently been abused in this manner, and have given occasion to many
frauds, equally hurtful both to the revenue and to the fair trader, is
well known.
CHAPTER V.
OF BOUNTIES.
Bounties upon exportation are, in Great Britain, frequently petitioned
for, and sometimes granted, to the produce of particular branches of
domestic industry. By means of them, our merchants and manufacturers, it
is pretended, will be enabled to sell their goods as cheap or cheaper than
their rivals in the foreign market. A greater quantity, it is said, will
thus be exported, and the balance of trade consequently turned more in
favour of our own country. We cannot give our workmen a monopoly in the
foreign, as we have done in the home market. We cannot force foreigners to
buy their goods, as we have done our own countrymen. The next best
expedient, it has been thought, therefore, is to pay them for buying. It
is in this manner that the mercantile system proposes to enrich the whole
country, and to put money into all our pockets, by means of the balance of
trade.
Bounties, it is allowed, ought to be given to those branches of trade only
which cannot be carried on without them. But every branch of trade in
which the merchant can sell his goods for a price which replaces to him,
with the ordinary profits of stock, the whole capital employed in
preparing and sending them to market, can be carried on without a bounty.
Every such branch is evidently upon a level with all the other branches of
trade which are carried on without bounties, and cannot, therefore,
require one more than they. Those trades only require bounties, in which
the merchant is obliged to sell his goods for a price which does not
replace to him his capital, together with the ordinary profit, or in which
he is obliged to sell them for less than it really cost him to send them
to market. The bounty is given in order to make up this loss, and to
encourage him to continue, or, perhaps, to begin a trade, of which the
expense is supposed to be greater than the returns, of which every
operation eats up a part of the capital employed in it, and which is of
such a nature, that if all other trades resembled it, there would soon be
no capital left in the country.
The trades, it is to be observed, which are carried on by means of
bounties, are the only ones which can be carried on between two nations
for any considerable time together, in such a manner as that one of them
shall always and regularly lose, or sell its goods for less than it
really cost to send them to market. But if the bounty did not repay to the
merchant what he would otherwise lose upon the price of his goods, his own
interest would soon oblige him to employ his stock in another way, or to
find out a trade in which the price of the goods would replace to him,
with the ordinary profit, the capital employed in sending them to market.
The effect of bounties, like that of all the other expedients of the
mercantile system, can only be to force the trade of a country into a
channel much less advantageous than that in which it would naturally run
of its own accord.
The ingenious and well-informed author of the Tracts upon the Corn Trade
has shown very clearly, that since the bounty upon the exportation of corn
was first established, the price of the corn exported, valued moderately
enough, has exceeded that of the corn imported, valued very high, by a
much greater sum than the amount of the whole bounties which have been
paid during that period. This, he imagines, upon the true principles of
the mercantile system, is a clear proof that this forced corn trade is
beneficial to the nation, the value of the exportation exceeding that of
the importation by a much greater sum than the whole extraordinary expense
which the public has been at in order to get it exported. He does not
consider that this extraordinary expense, or the bounty, is the smallest
part of the expense which the exportation of corn really costs the
society. The capital which the farmer employed in raising it must likewise
be taken into the account. Unless the price of the corn, when sold in the
foreign markets, replaces not only the bounty, but this capital, together
with the ordinary profits of stock, the society is a loser by the
difference, or the national stock is so much diminished. But the very
reason for which it has been thought necessary to grant a bounty, is the
supposed insufficiency of the price to do this.
The average price of corn, it has been said, has fallen considerably since
the establishment of the bounty. That the average price of corn began to
fall somewhat towards the end of the last century, and has continued to do
so during the course of the sixty-four first years of the present, I have
already endeavoured to show. But this event, supposing it to be real, as I
believe it to be, must have happened in spite of the bounty, and cannot
possibly have happened in consequence of it. It has happened in France, as
well as in England, though in France there was not only no bounty, but,
till 1764, the exportation of corn was subjected to a general prohibition.
This gradual fall in the average price of grain, it is probable,
therefore, is ultimately owing neither to the one regulation nor to the
other, but to that gradual and insensible rise in the real value of
silver, which, in the first book of this discourse, I have endeavoured to
show, has taken place in the general market of Europe during the course of
the present century. It seems to be altogether impossible that the bounty
could ever contribute to lower the price of grain.
In years of plenty, it has already been observed, the bounty, by
occasioning an extraordinary exportation, necessarily keeps up the price
of corn in the home market above what it would naturally fall to. To do so
was the avowed purpose of the institution. In years of scarcity, though
the bounty is frequently suspended, yet the great exportation which it
occasions in years of plenty, must frequently hinder, more or less, the
plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another. Both in years
of plenty and in years of scarcity, therefore, the bounty necessarily
tends to raise the money price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwise
would be in the home market.
That in the actual state of tillage the bounty must necessarily have this
tendency, will not, I apprehend, be disputed by any reasonable person. But
it has been thought by many people, that it tends to encourage tillage,
and that in two different ways; first, by opening a more extensive foreign
market to the corn of the farmer, it tends, they imagine, to increase the
demand for, and consequently the production of, that commodity; and,
secondly by securing to him a better price than he could otherwise expect
in the actual state of tillage, it tends, they suppose, to encourage
tillage. This double encouragement must they imagine, in a long period of
years, occasion such an increase in the production of corn, as may lower
its price in the home market, much more than the bounty can raise it in
the actual state which tillage may, at the end of that period, happen to
be in.
I answer, that whatever extension of the foreign market can be occasioned
by the bounty must, in every particular year, be altogether at the expense
of the home market; as every bushel of corn, which is exported by means of
the bounty, and which would not have been exported without the bounty,
would have remained in the home market to increase the consumption, and to
lower the price of that commodity. The corn bounty, it is to be observed,
as well as every other bounty upon exportation, imposes two different
taxes upon the people; first, the tax which they are obliged to
contribute, in order to pay the bounty; and, secondly, the tax which
arises from the advanced price of the commodity in the home market, and
which, as the whole body of the people are purchasers of corn, must, in
this particular commodity, be paid by the whole body of the people. In
this particular commodity, therefore, this second tax is by much the
heaviest of the two. Let us suppose that, taking one year with another,
the bounty of 5s. upon the exportation of the quarter of wheat raises the
price of that commodity in the home market only 6d. the bushel, or 4s. the
quarter higher than it otherwise would have been in the actual state of
the crop. Even upon this very moderate supposition, the great body of the
people, over and above contributing the tax which pays the bounty of 5s.
upon every quarter of wheat exported, must pay another of 4s. upon every
quarter which they themselves consume. But according to the very well
informed author of the Tracts upon the Corn Trade, the average proportion
of the corn exported to that consumed at home, is not more than that of
one to thirty-one. For every 5s. therefore, which they contribute to the
payment of the first tax, they must contribute £6:4s. to the payment of
the second. So very heavy a tax upon the first necessary of life-must
either reduce the subsistence of the labouring poor, or it must occasion
some augmentation in their pecuniary wages, proportionable to that in the
pecuniary price of their subsistence. So far as it operates in the one
way, it must reduce the ability of the labouring poor to educate and bring
up their children, and must, so far, tend to restrain the population of
the country. So far as it operates in the other, it must reduce the
ability of the employers of the poor, to employ so great a number as they
otherwise might do, and must so far tend to restrain the industry of the
country. The extraordinary exportation of corn, therefore occasioned by
the bounty, not only in every particular year diminishes the home, just as
much as it extends the foreign market and consumption, but, by restraining
the population and industry of the country, its final tendency is to stint
and restrain the gradual extension of the home market; and thereby, in the
long-run, rather to diminish than to augment the whole market and
consumption of corn.
This enhancement of the money price of corn, however, it has been thought,
by rendering that commodity more profitable to the farmer, must
necessarily encourage its production.
I answer, that this might be the case, if the effect of the bounty was to
raise the real price of corn, or to enable the farmer, with an equal
quantity of it, to maintain a greater number of labourers in the same
manner, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, than other labourers are
commonly maintained in his neighbourhood. But neither the bounty, it is
evident, nor any other human institution, can have any such effect. It is
not the real, but the nominal price of corn, which can in any considerable
degree be affected by the bounty. And though the tax, which that
institution imposes upon the whole body of the people, may be very
burdensome to those who pay it, it is of very little advantage to those
who receive it.
The real effect of the bounty is not so much to raise the real value of
corn, as to degrade the real value of silver; or to make an equal quantity
of it exchange for a smaller quantity, not only of corn, but of all other
home made commodities; for the money price of corn regulates that of all
other home made commodities.
It regulates the money price of labour, which must always be such as to
enable the labourer to purchase a quantity of corn sufficient to maintain
him and his family, either in the liberal, moderate, or scanty manner, in
which the advancing, stationary, or declining, circumstances of the
society, oblige his employers to maintain him.
It regulates the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of
land, which, in every period of improvement, must bear a certain
proportion to that of corn, though this proportion is different in
different periods. It regulates, for example, the money price of grass and
hay, of butcher’s meat, of horses, and the maintenance of horses, of land
carriage consequently, or of the greater part of the inland commerce of
the country.
By regulating the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce
of land, it regulates that of the materials of almost all manufactures; by
regulating the money price of labour, it regulates that of manufacturing
art and industry; and by regulating both, it regulates that of the
complete manufacture. The money price of labour, and of every thing that
is the produce, either of land or labour, must necessarily either rise or
fall in proportion to the money price of corn.
Though in consequence of the bounty, therefore, the farmer should be
enabled to sell his corn for 4s. the bushel, instead of 3s:6d. and to pay
his landlord a money rent proportionable to this rise in the money price
of his produce; yet if, in consequence of this rise in the price of corn,
4s. will purchase no more home made goods of any other kind than 3s. 6d.
would have done before, neither the circumstances of the farmer, nor those
of the landlord, will be much mended by this change. The farmer will not
be able to cultivate much better; the landlord will not be able to live
much better. In the purchase of foreign commodities, this enhancement in
the price of corn may give them some little advantage. In that of home
made commodities, it can give them none at all. And almost the whole
expense of the farmer, and the far greater part even of that of the
landlord, is in home made commodities.
That degradation in the value of silver, which is the effect of the
fertility of the mines, and which operates equally, or very nearly
equally, through the greater part of the commercial world, is a matter of
very little consequence to any particular country. The consequent rise of
all money prices, though it does not make those who receive them really
richer, does not make them really poorer. A service of plate becomes
really cheaper, and every thing else remains precisely of the same real
value as before.
But that degradation in the value of silver, which, being the effect
either of the peculiar situation or of the political institutions of a
particular country, takes place only in that country, is a matter of very
great consequence, which, far from tending to make anybody really richer,
tends to make every body really poorer. The rise in the money price of all
commodities, which is in this case peculiar to that country, tends to
discourage more or less every sort of industry which is carried on within
it, and to enable foreign nations, by furnishing almost all sorts of goods
for a smaller quantity of silver than its own workmen can afford to do, to
undersell them, not only in the foreign, but even in the home market.
It is the peculiar situation of Spain and Portugal, as proprietors of the
mines, to be the distributers of gold and silver to all the other
countries of Europe. Those metals ought naturally, therefore, to be
somewhat cheaper in Spain and Portugal than in any other part of Europe.
The difference, however, should be no more than the amount of the freight
and insurance; and, on account of the great value and small bulk of those
metals, their freight is no great matter, and their insurance is the same
as that of any other goods of equal value. Spain and Portugal, therefore,
could suffer very little from their peculiar situation, if they did not
aggravate its disadvantages by their political institutions.
Spain by taxing, and Portugal by prohibiting, the exportation of gold and
silver, load that exportation with the expense of smuggling, and raise the
value of those metals in other countries so much more above what it is in
their own, by the whole amount of this expense. When you dam up a stream
of water, as soon as the dam is full, as much water must run over the
dam-head as if there was no dam at all. The prohibition of exportation
cannot detain a greater quantity of gold and silver in Spain and Portugal,
than what they can afford to employ, than what the annual produce of their
land and labour will allow them to employ, in coin, plate, gilding, and
other ornaments of gold and silver. When they have got this quantity, the
dam is full, and the whole stream which flows in afterwards must run over.
The annual exportation of gold and silver from Spain and Portugal,
accordingly, is, by all accounts, notwithstanding these restraints, very
near equal to the whole annual importation. As the water, however, must
always be deeper behind the dam-head than before it, so the quantity of
gold and silver which these restraints detain in Spain and Portugal, must,
in proportion to the annual produce of their land and labour, be greater
than what is to be found in other countries. The higher and stronger the
dam-head, the greater must be the difference in the depth of water behind
and before it. The higher the tax, the higher the penalties with which the
prohibition is guarded, the more vigilant and severe the police which
looks after the execution of the law, the greater must be the difference
in the proportion of gold and silver to the annual produce of the land and
labour of Spain and Portugal, and to that of other countries. It is said,
accordingly, to be very considerable, and that you frequently find there a
profusion of plate in houses, where there is nothing else which would in
other countries be thought suitable or correspondent to this sort of
magnificence. The cheapness of gold and silver, or, what is the same
thing, the dearness of all commodities, which is the necessary effect of
this redundancy of the precious metals, discourages both the agriculture
and manufactures of Spain and Portugal, and enables foreign nations to
supply them with many sorts of rude, and with almost all sorts of
manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of gold and silver than what
they themselves can either raise or make them for at home. The tax and
prohibition operate in two different ways. They not only lower very much
the value of the precious metals in Spain and Portugal, but by detaining
there a certain quantity of those metals which would otherwise flow over
other countries, they keep up their value in those other countries
somewhat above what it otherwise would be, and thereby give those
countries a double advantage in their commerce with Spain and Portugal.
Open the flood-gates, and there will presently be less water above, and
more below the dam-head, and it will soon come to a level in both places.
Remove the tax and the prohibition, and as the quantity of gold and silver
will diminish considerably in Spain and Portugal, so it will increase
somewhat in other countries; and the value of those metals, their
proportion to the annual produce of land and labour, will soon come to a
level, or very near to a level, in all. The loss which Spain and Portugal
could sustain by this exportation of their gold and silver, would be
altogether nominal and imaginary. The nominal value of their goods, and of
the annual produce of their land and labour, would fall, and would be
expressed or represented by a smaller quantity of silver than before; but
their real value would be the same as before, and would be sufficient to
maintain, command, and employ the same quantity of labour. As the nominal
value of their goods would fall, the real value of what remained of their
gold and silver would rise, and a smaller quantity of those metals would
answer all the same purposes of commerce and circulation which had
employed a greater quantity before. The gold and silver which would go
abroad would not go abroad for nothing, but would bring back an equal
value of goods of some kind or other. Those goods, too, would not be all
matters of mere luxury and expense, to be consumed by idle people, who
produce nothing in return for their consumption. As the real wealth and
revenue of idle people would not be augmented by this extraordinary
exportation of gold and silver, so neither would their consumption be much
augmented by it. Those goods would probably, the greater part of them, and
certainly some part of them, consist in materials, tools, and provisions,
for the employment and maintenance of industrious people, who would
reproduce, with a profit, the full value of their consumption. A part of
the dead stock of the society would thus be turned into active stock, and
would put into motion a greater quantity of industry than had been
employed before. The annual produce of their land and labour would
immediately be augmented a little, and in a few years would probably be
augmented a great deal; their industry being thus relieved from one of the
most oppressive burdens which it at present labours under.
The bounty upon the exportation of corn necessarily operates exactly in
the same way as this absurd policy of Spain and Portugal. Whatever be the
actual state of tillage, it renders our corn somewhat dearer in the home
market than it otherwise would be in that state, and somewhat cheaper in
the foreign; and as the average money price of corn regulates, more or
less, that of all other commodities, it lowers the value of silver
considerably in the one, and tends to raise it a little in the other. It
enables foreigners, the Dutch in particular, not only to eat our corn
cheaper than they otherwise could do, but sometimes to eat it cheaper than
even our own people can do upon the same occasions; as we are assured by
an excellent authority, that of Sir Matthew Decker. It hinders our own
workmen from furnishing their goods for so small a quantity of silver as
they otherwise might do, and enables the Dutch to furnish theirs for a
smaller. It tends to render our manufactures somewhat dearer in every
market, and theirs somewhat cheaper, than they otherwise would be, and
consequently to give their industry a double advantage over our own.
The bounty, as it raises in the home market, not so much the real, as the
nominal price of our corn; as it augments, not the quantity of labour
which a certain quantity of corn can maintain and employ, but only the
quantity of silver which it will exchange for; it discourages our
manufactures, without rendering any considerable service, either to our
farmers or country gentlemen. It puts, indeed, a little more money into
the pockets of both, and it will perhaps be somewhat difficult to persuade
the greater part of them that this is not rendering them a very
considerable service. But if this money sinks in its value, in the
quantity of labour, provisions, and home-made commodities of all different
kinds which it is capable of purchasing, as much as it rises in its
quantity, the service will be little more than nominal and imaginary.
There is, perhaps, but one set of men in the whole commonwealth to whom
the bounty either was or could be essentially serviceable. These were the
corn merchants, the exporters and importers of corn. In years of plenty,
the bounty necessarily occasioned a greater exportation than would
otherwise have taken place; and by hindering the plenty of the one year
from relieving the scarcity of another, it occasioned in years of scarcity
a greater importation than would otherwise have been necessary. It
increased the business of the corn merchant in both; and in the years of
scarcity, it not only enabled him to import a greater quantity, but to
sell it for a better price, and consequently with a greater profit, than
he could otherwise have made, if the plenty of one year had not been more
or less hindered from relieving the scarcity of another. It is in this set
of men, accordingly, that I have observed the greatest zeal for the
continuance or renewal of the bounty.
Our country gentlemen, when they imposed the high duties upon the
exportation of foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a
prohibition, and when they established the bounty, seem to have imitated
the conduct of our manufacturers. By the one institution, they secured to
themselves the monopoly of the home market, and by the other they
endeavoured to prevent that market from ever being overstocked with their
commodity. By both they endeavoured to raise its real value, in the same
manner as our manufacturers had, by the like institutions, raised the real
value of many different sorts of manufactured goods. They did not,
perhaps, attend to the great and essential difference which nature has
established between corn and almost every other sort of goods. When,
either by the monopoly of the home market, or by a bounty upon
exportation, you enable our woollen or linen manufacturers to sell their
goods for somewhat a better price than they otherwise could get for them,
you raise, not only the nominal, but the real price of those goods; you
render them equivalent to a greater quantity of labour and subsistence;
you increase not only the nominal, but the real profit, the real wealth
and revenue of those manufacturers; and you enable them, either to live
better themselves, or to employ a greater quantity of labour in those
particular manufactures. You really encourage those manufactures, and
direct towards them a greater quantity of the industry of the country than
what would properly go to them of its own accord. But when, by the like
institutions, you raise the nominal or money price of corn, you do not
raise its real value; you do not increase the real wealth, the real
revenue, either of our farmers or country gentlemen; you do not encourage
the growth of corn, because you do not enable them to maintain and employ
more labourers in raising it. The nature of things has stamped upon corn a
real value, which cannot be altered by merely altering its money price. No
bounty upon exportation, no monopoly of the home market, can raise that
value. The freest competition cannot lower it, Through the world in
general, that value is equal to the quantity of labour which it can
maintain, and in every particular place it is equal to the quantity of
labour which it can maintain in the way, whether liberal, moderate, or
scanty, in which labour is commonly maintained in that place. Woollen or
linen cloth are not the regulating commodities by which the real value of
all other commodities must be finally measured and determined; corn is.
The real value of every other commodity is finally measured and determined
by the proportion which its average money price bears to the average money
price of corn. The real value of corn does not vary with those variations
in its average money price, which sometimes occur from one century to
another; it is the real value of silver which varies with them.