II. fide. In 1697 the English prohibited the im- CHAP. portation of bonelace, the manufacture of Flan-ders. 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 bonelace into England, was taken off upon condition that the importation of English woollens into Flanders should be put on the fame 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 compenfate the tranfitory inconveniency of paying dearer during a fhort time for fome forts of goods. To judge whether fuch retaliations are likely to produce fuch an effect, does not, perhaps, belong fo much to the fcience of a legiflator, whofe deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the fame, as to the skill of that infidious 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 fuch repeal can be procured, it seems a bad method of compenfating the injury done to certain claffes of our people, to do another injury ourselves, not only to thofe claffes, but to almost all the other claffes of them. When our neighbours prohibit fome manufacture of ours, we generally prohibit, not only the fame, for that alone would feldom affect them confider ably, BOOK ably, but fome other manufacture of theirs. IV. This may no doubt give encouragement to fome particular clafs of workmen among ourselves, and by excluding fome of their rivals, may enable them to raise their price in the homemarket. Those workmen, however, who fuffered by our neighbours prohibition will not be benefited by ours. On the contrary, they and almost all the other claffes of our citizens will thereby be obliged to pay dearer than before for certain goods. Every fuch law, therefore, impofes a real tax upon the whole country, not in favour of that particular clafs of workmen who were injured by our neighbours prohibition, but of fome other class. THE cafe in which it may fometimes be a matter of deliberation, how far, or in what manner, it is proper to reftore the free importation of foreign goods, after it has been for fome 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 fo far extended as to employ a great multitude of hands. Humanity may in this cafe require that the freedom of trade should be restored only by flow gradations, and with a good deal of reserve and circumfpection. Were those high duties and prohibitions taken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of the fame kind might be poured fo faft into the home market, as to deprive all at once many thousands of our people of their ordinary employment and means of fubfiftence. The dif order J. order which this would occafion might no doubt CHAP. be very confiderable. 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 freeft importation of foreign goods. Such manufactures must be fold as cheap abroad as any other foreign goods of the fame quality and kind, and confequently must be fold cheaper at home. They would ftill, therefore, keep poffeffion of the home market, and though a capricious man of fashion might fometimes prefer foreign wares, merely because they were foreign, to cheaper and better goods of the fame kind that were made at home, this folly could, from the nature of things, extend to fo few, that it could make no fenfible impreffion 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 hard-ware, are annually exported to other European countries without any bounty, and these are the manufactures which employ the greatest number of hands. The filk, perhaps, is the manufacture which would fuffer the moft 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 reftoring the freedom of trade, be thrown all at once out of their ordinary employment and common method of fubfiftence, it would BOOK would by no means follow that they would thereIV. by be deprived either of employment or fub fiftence. By the reduction of the army and navy at the end of the late war, more than a hundred thousand foldiers and feamen, 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 fuffered fome inconveniency, they were not thereby deprived of all employment and fubfiftence. The greater part of the seamen, it is probable, gradually betook themselves to the merchantservice as they could find occafion, and in the mean time both they and the foldiers were abforbed in the great mafs of the people, and employed in a great variety of occupations. Not only no great convulfion, but no fenfible diforder arose from so great a change in the fituation of more than a hundred thousand men, all accustomed to the use of arms, and many of them to rapine and plunder. The number of vagrants was scarce any-where fenfibly increased by it, even the wages of labour were not reduced by it in any occupation, fo far as I have been able to learn, except in that of feamen in the merchantservice. But if we compare together the habits of a foldier and of any fort of manufacturer, we fhall find that thofe of the latter do not tend fo much to difqualify him from being employed in a new trade, as thofe of the former from being employed in any. The manufacturer has always been accustomed to look for his fubfiftence from his labour only: the foldier to expect it from his pay. Application II. Application and induftry have been familiar to CHAP. the one; idlenefs and diffipation to the other. But it is furely much easier to change the direction of industry from one fort of labour to another, than to turn idleness and diffipation to any. To the greater part of manufactures befides, it has already been observed, there are other collateral manufactures of fo fimilar a nature, that a workman can easily transfer his industry from one of them to another. The greater part of fuch workmen too are occafionally employed in country labour. The ftock which employed them in a particular manufacture before, will still remain in the country to employ an equal number of people in fome other way. The capital of the country remaining the fame, the demand for labour will likewise be the fame, or very nearly the fame, though it may be exerted in different places and for different occupations. Soldiers and feamen, indeed, when dif charged from the king's service, are at liberty to exercise any trade, within any town or place of Great Britain or Ireland. Let the fame natural liberty of exercifing what species of industry they please, be restored to all his majesty's subjects, in the fame manner as to foldiers and feamen; that is, break down the exclufive privileges of corporations, and repeal the ftatute of apprenticeship, both which are real encroachments upon natural liberty, and add to these the repeal of the law of fettlements, so that a poor workman, when thrown out of employment either in one trade or in one place, may seek for it in another 、 |