the right way to enrich a nation, was to send out as many of our products and merchandise as possible, and looked with a careful eye upon those commodities which were imported for luxury. The queen, observing that great quantities of money were sent out of England to buy silks and other outlandish wares, and that many of the nobility wasted their estates and run much in debt, she, by proclamation, commanded all persons to conform to a certain prescribed mode of apparel, and she began the example herself in her Queen Caroline also hath given a most noble example for encouraging the wear of our own manufactures, and discouraging those drains to the nation by foreign lace, silks, &c.; and it is to be hoped her example will be imitated by our nobility and gentry. Then we shall soon see the balance of trade turn in our favor, and gold and silver brought into the nation to be coined."

own court.

"What a boundless wealth," says Gee, "might be brought into this kingdom by supplying our plantations with everything they want, and all manufactured within ourselves!" He thought "a small squadron of light frigates," and "placing standing forces in the colonies, to keep them in order, and obliging them to raise money to pay them," would suppress any disposition in the colonists "to set up for themselves." He says: "It would be sad policy for governments to spare their people, be at the charge of protecting them abroad, and yet allow them to set up the manufactures of their mother-kingdoms, whereby they would supply themselves, and in respect to trade and commerce, throw them into a state of independency." He proposed that "all slitting mills," in the colonies, "and engines for drawing wire and weaving stockings, be put down; and that every smith who keeps a common forge or shop, shall register his name and place of abode, and the name of every servant which he shall employ; which license shall be renewed every year, and pay for the liberty of working at such trade; that all negroes shall be prohibited from weaving either linen or woollen, or spinning or combing wool, or working at any manufacture of iron, further than making it into pig or bar iron; that they shall be also prohibited from manufacturing hats, stockings, or leather of any kind." Private families might spin and weave for their own use, but not for market. Detailed reports from the governors of colonies to the lords of trade, of all going on in the way of manufactures, were required, "that they might be encouraged or depressed, according to their wants, or the danger of their too much interfering with us. Indeed,"

says Gee, "if they shall set up manufactures, and the government shall afterward be under a necessity of stopping their progress, we must not expect that it will be done with the same ease that now it may."

On the subject of depending on foreigners for things that could be produced at home, Gee says: "It is astonishing that so wise a nation as this does not take care to regulate these matters. All other nations of Europe," he says, "are wise enough to do it.". "For the sake of saving a penny, we often debar ourselves of things of a thousand times the value. This misfortune will happen to any trading nation, if the persons who have the regulation of the commerce do not understand it well enough to distinguish nicely between those channels by which the riches flow in upon them, and those that carry them away.

"If we examine into all the circumstances of the inhabitants of our plantations, and our own, it will appear that not one fourth part of their product redounds to their own profit. For, out of all that comes here, they only carry back clothing and other accommodations for their families, all which is of the manufacture and merchandise of this kingdom. If anything to spare, it is laid up here, and their children are sent home to be educated; if enough to purchase an estate, then it is laid out in Old England. All these advantages we receive from the plantations, besides the mortgages on the planters' estates, and the high interest they pay us, which is very considerable; and therefore very great care ought to be taken in regulating all affairs of the colonies, that the planters be not put under too many difficulties, but encouraged to go on cheerfully.

"New England and the northern colonies have not commodities and products enough to send us in return for their necessary clothing, &c., but are under very great difficulties; and therefore any ordinary sort sells with them. And when they are grown out of fashion with us, THEY ARE NEW-FASHIONED ENOUGH THEre. Therefore, those places are the great markets we have to dispose of such goods... The continual motion and intercourse our people have with the colonies, may be compared to bees of a hive, which go out empty, but come back again loaded."-"Laws," said Gee," are made, in the colonies, which they exercise till sent home and disapproved of. It is therefore proposed, that no law shall pass in the plantations, until a copy thereof be prepared by the governor and assembly of each province, and sent here to be examined or approved by the king and council, as the laws from Ireland now are," save special laws for defence against the Indians.—“We ought

always to keep a watchful eye over our colonies, to restrain them from setting up any of the manufactures which are carried on in Great Britain, whereby they would do us much hurt, and themselves no good, because their labor might be more profitably employed in raising the products of the country; and any such attempts should be crushed in the beginning; for if they are suffered to grow up to maturity, it will become difficult to suppress them, and seem a greater hardship to the people." This, certainly, is in excellent keeping with the annual report of the United States secretary of the treasury, for December, 1845.

"To think it would be an advantage for any trading nation to admit all manner of foreign commodities to be imported free from all duties, is an unaccountable notion, and still much less suitable to the circumstances of our island than to the continent. . . It will be a maxim strictly to be observed by all prudent governments, which are capable of manufactures within themselves, to lay such duties on the foreign as may favor their own, and discourage the importation of any of the like sorts from abroad. By this means the French have, in our time, nursed up a woollen manufactory, and brought it to such perfection, as to furnish themselves with all such woollen goods as they formerly bought of us to a very great value, and are even become competitors with us in foreign markets.”—“We send our money to foreign nations, and by employing their poor, instead of our own, enable them to thrust us out of our foreign trade, and by their imposing high duties upon our manufactures, so clog the exportation of them, that it amounts to a prohibition."-"The trade of a nation is of nighty consequence, and a thing that ought to be seriously weighed, because the happiness of so many millions depends upon it. A little mistake in the beginning of an undertaking may swell to a very great one. A nation may gain vast riches by trade and commerce; or for want of due regard and attention, may be drained of them. I am the more willing to mention this, because I am afraid the present circumstance of ours carries out more riches than it brings home. As there is

cause to apprehend this, surely it ought to be looked into; and the more, since, if there be a wound, these are remedies proposed, which, if rightly applied, will make our commerce flourish, and the nation happy."

Such was the reasoning of Joshua Gee, which was adopted as the national policy of Great Britain at the time, and which has prevailed there down to the present period, without remission, and

without any present prospect of being relaxed. It was by this policy, that she has become the richest, the greatest, and most powerful nation in the world.

M. Say's reasoning on the balance of trade is curious enough. He says: "Money, like other things, is itself a commodity. A French merchant consigns to England brandies, to the amount of 20,000 francs; his commodity was equivalent in France to that sum in specie; if it sell in England for £1000 sterling, and that sum remitted in gold or silver be worth 24,000 francs, there is a gain of 4,000 francs only, although France has received 24,000 francs in specie. But, should the merchant lay out his £1,000 in cotton goods, and be able to sell them in France for 25,000 francs, there would then be a gain to the importer and to the nation of 8,000 francs, although no specie whatever had been brought into the country. In short, the gain is precisely the excess of the value received above the value given for it, whatever be the form in which the import is made."

Brandy is a product of France, and she is supposed to have a surplus for the foreign market. Clearly, then, by the first hypothesis, France received an addition to her "numéraire" of 24,000 francs, and was a gainer to that amount. If her "tools" of trade were short, it was an important gain, so far as it might go to supply that defect. She gained the whole any how. In the second hypothesis, as between France and England, it was a mere case of barter of one thing for another; and if France wanted the cotton goods, and did not want the brandy, it was a profitable exchange

that is all. It can not be said that France gained 8,000 francs, as M. Say avers; for the profit of the merchant was between him and the consumers of his goods. He bought the brandy of French producers, and sold the returns to French consumers, who paid him 8,000 francs for his services. So far as these transactions were concerned, these 8,000 francs profit to the merchant, only passed from one hand to another in France. France itself, as a trading party with England, gained nothing but, as is possible, a profitable barter-things wanted for things not wanted. When Peter pays over to Paul, both being Frenchmen, 8,000 francs, by what rule can it be shown that France is, therefore, 8,000 francs richer? The principle involved, and evidently intended to be asserted by M. Say, in these two hypotheses, is entirely fallacious, and in its practical operation as a doctrine of public economy, might be ruinously disastrous. As for instance, when a nation, by overtrading, has already parted with half, or three fourths of its "tools" of trade,

or of the cash which is necessary for its ordinary business, this doctrine avers, that that nation is not only a gainer by the barter of one thing for another, if the merchants who make these exchanges profit in the distribution of the returns, and a gainer to the exact amount of the profit of the merchants; but that it is a gainer also by trading away the remainder of its cash, provided the merchants realize a profit, and a gainer to the amount of that profit. For he says: "The gain [to the nation] is precisely the excess of the value received, above the value given for it, whatever be the form in which the import is made.”

This brings us precisely to the cases of excessive importations, as noticed in our commercial history in chapter xxiv., which have always proved so disastrous and ruinous to this country. That this is M. Say's meaning, is evident enough from what he says, in the same connexion, viz.: "In a thriving country, the value of the total imports, should always exceed that of the exports." It is easy enough to see, that no country would thrive very long in this way, as its cash must sooner or later be exhausted. But, on his own theory, that money is only a commodity, there could not be an excess of imports, in an honest commerce, when all balances are settled. Does he mean to sanction repudiation-fraud? The whole of this reasoning is characterized by a theoretical audacity which one might well wonder at, and demands a faith that must be entirely blind, if given.

It is not denied that the earnings of American ships and crews, and the profits of American merchants, might justify some excess of imports, if there were money enough already in the country for its trade. But we do not understand this to be the ground of M. Say's averment. He expressly says, that a nation should encourage the export of specie, as a profitable commerce, without any regard to its being necessary, or not, as "tools" of trade at home.

What is necessary to a private commercial dealer, is necessary to a commercial nation, viz., always to have money enough at command, to carry on the business of the party concerned, and to meet all engagements, without embarrassment. To dispose of other commodities, not wanted at home, as fast as ready for market, at a fair price, may well be regarded as good economy. And to use money in trade, so long as enough is on hand for all demands, may also be good economy. But to part with money merely for the sake of buying more than one sells, without regard to the consideration. whether it can be spared, is a most extraordinary method of thrift.