IV. BOOK evidently facrificed to that of the producer. It is altogether for the benefit of the latter, that the former is obliged to pay that enhancement of price which this monopoly almost always occafions. It is altogether for the benefit of the producer that bounties are granted upon the exportation of fome of his productions. The home-consumer is obliged to pay, firft, the tax which is neceffary for paying the bounty, and secondly, the ftill greater tax which neceffarily arifes from the enhancement of the price of the commodity in the home market. By the famous treaty of commerce with Portugal, the consumer is prevented by high duties. from purchafing of a neighbouring country, a commodity which our own climate does not produce, but is obliged to purchase it of a distant country, though it is acknowledged, that the commodity of the diftant country is of a worfe quality than that of the near one. The home-confumer is obliged to fubmit to this inconveniency, in order that the producer may import into the diftant country fome of his productions upon more advantageous terms than he would otherwife have been allowed to do. confumer, too, is obliged to pay, whatever enhancement in the price of those very productions, this forced exportation may occafion in the home market. 1 The BUT in the fyftem of laws which has been established for the management of our American and West Indian colonies, the intereft of the home-confumer has been facrificed to that of the VIII. the producer with a more extravagant profufion CHAP. than in all our other commercial regulations. A great empire has been established for the fole purpose of raifing up a nation of cuftomers who fhould be obliged to buy from the fhops of our different producers, all the goods with which thefe could fupply them. For the fake of that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford our producers, the home-confumers have been burdened with the whole expence of maintaining and defending that empire. For this purpose, and for this purpose only, in the two laft wars, more than two hundred millions have been spent, and a new debt of more than a hundred and feventy millions has been contracted over and above all that had been expended for the fame purpose in former wars. The intereft of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit, which, it ever could be pretended, was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the goods, which at an average have been annually exported to the colonies. Ir cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the contrivers of this whole mercantile fyftem; not the confumers, we may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the producers, whose interest has been fo carefully attended to; and among this latter clafs our merchants and manufacturers have been by L13 IV. BOOK far the principal architects. In the mercantile regulations, which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended to; and the intereft, not so much of the confumers, as that of fome other fets of producers, has been facrificed to it. |