employment to those manufacturing and agricultural classes whose labour would be supplanted. It is alleged, indeed, that in the additional commodities which would be demanded from abroad this employment would be found; but it is matter of uncertainty whether this demand, which the increased foreign means would certainly create abroad, would be for our productions. Although the foreign supplier should take from our manufacturer something equal to the value of the commodity he furnished, yet indirectly our manufacturer might suffer. The German linen traders and the Polish agriculturists will take our hardware or cotton goods to the value of the linen and corn we take from them; but the loss of any portion of our population would occasion the further loss of demand for numerous objects of consumption. The linen manufacturer and farmer of this country consume among us a variety of articles, the supply of which supports other parts of the population, who again consume hardware and cotton goods and the loss of them, though not felt as to the demand for their direct consumption, because that demand might be replaced from abroad, may still be extensively felt in the more remote and indirect ramifications. Allowing that the remaining productive classes may thus furnish, to the extent of their revenue, something to exchange against foreign linen, silk, and corn, yet that revenue may still be diminished. Their personal wants and desire of these commodities may be the same, but the means of supplying them may and must be less, by the loss of the indirect branches of industry which the former home linen, silk, and corn manufacturers and producers sustained. If our resources are thus reduced, it is probable that the aggregate of our imports fom Germany, France, and Poland, would not be augmented notwithstanding the addition of three important articles; our limited means compelling us to take smaller quantities of other commodities. Instead of being rich customers we may become poor; we may be obliged to confine ourselves to the necessary commodities of corn and linen, or share our remaining means among the luxuries of wines and silks. What have we, in effect, to give in exchange for the foreign commodities which our liberality would admit? We have named, by way of illustrating our argument, our cotton, coarse woollen, and hardware manufactures. But France and Germany might, and actually do, wholly or in part, prohibit their importation. Poland might be able to supply herself more cheaply with these articles from her continental neighbours. In the endless variety of manufactures there are some in which the continent is far short of this country, in many about equal, in others superior. In printed T4 cottons, cottons, France and Switzerland excel in the designs and workmanship, though their fabrics are somewhat dearer; in some low muslins Switzerland is equal; in various kinds of fine and light woollens we are surpassed by the Netherlands, France and Germany; and in several other branches of manufactures, as hats, hose, refined sugar, &c. we are barely able to compete with the continent. In In many articles of glass and earthenware, carriages, furniture, &c. habit induces the bulk of the people to supply themselves from an accustomed source; and individuals, rather than be singular, where singularity is less practised than here, consent to use what they may be ready to allow is not exactly so good as they might obtain in the quarters to which they are not used to recur. Were every nation to enter into the same system of free commercial intercourse, it would be less difficult to ascertain the effect upon each; but as this is not the case, and we are, at present, singular in our profession of this principle, every other country continuing the real or supposed safeguards of restriction and prohibition, it will be coming nearer to a practical purpose to consider, under such circumstances, the consequences likely to ensue upon our adoption of freedom of trade. After opening the country to the reception of foreign commodities and manufactures, and finding no inconsiderable number of our own manufactures rapidly disappearing from amongst us, we should be left with a comparatively limited number of produc tive sources of industry. Those countries whose manufactures would inundate us, and, from their internal wealth and consumption, be most able to take off the commodities we should have to offer, would present almost entirely closed ports to the few remaining articles of our production. These impediments occurring to the exportation of our commodities, it would become necessary to transmit specie to pay for the imports of these new foreign manufactures. The economists tell us, that the process, in this case, first leads to a contraction of the circulation, this contraction to the enhanced value of what specie remains, or, in other words, to the reduced price of commodities, till their cheapness force their export to furnish fresh metallic supplies, with which to continue the intercourse. It is to be tried whether the countries furnishing the specie will or can be induced by the temptation of such diminished prices to take increased quantities of our goods. It will be necessary for our manufactures to drain specie from all quarters, whether the original sources of it or not. If not the sources, the places furnishing it must first draw the specie from other quarters by the commodities in which they excel, whether of soil or manufacture. With a narrowed range of markets and a reduced variety of pro ducts ducts of industry, can it be expected that we shall be able to accomplish greater effects? If we appeal to practical men, they will inform us that they have had, haplessly, in the many vicissitudes which our commerce has undergone, ample experience of diminished prices, and that the consequence has been more of personal loss than increased consumption; and that there appear other controlling circumstances in the expenditure of all countries, which counteract or place limits to the influence of this cheapness; especially in the degree arising from contracted cur rency. If we cannot sell we shall not produce, and we cannot sell abroad more than the countries to which we can have recourse will buy. Their powers of purchase are bounded, and cannot be enlarged with the facility often assumed in argument. Under the most favourable circumstances it can only be by a slow progression, and in many actual constitutions of society is scarce capable of any material augmentation. Agricultural countries are restricted in the means of purchase by the confined fertility of the earth, or the degrees of productiveness acquired. These rarely reach the boundaries fixed by nature, but more generally are subject to the extent of actual cultivation which results under the prevalent knowledge, local institutions, and laws. We must trade with the countries of the world as we find them, and with that portion of demand which they present; we cannot count on the unlimited increase amongst them promised by our philosophers until they themselves are agreed on the most efficacious method of such increase, and have made couverts and procured the adoption of their system by all governments. Meanwhile, in practice, it is found that carry what we will to Poland, and countries similarly constituted, the land proprietor seems almost the sole purchaser, with means little susceptible of increase, and habits often as unchangeable as those of an Indian chief: his labourers, transferable with the soil, are forbidden by the tenure of their existence from any endeavours to accumulate wealth. The African chief cannot be brought to any general application to matters of merchandize by the temptation of a somewhat greater offer of our commodities. It is well known than in the Eastern despotisms, the entire surplus produce of the soil is engrossed by the state, while the mass of the population exists in slavery and indigence: the latter have nothing to offer for foreign effects, and the former find greater necessity of maintaining numerous dependants, than of pouring the revenue collected in their hands into channels to produce commercial relations. The South American mines are limited in their productiveness, and were the slaves that work them with their employers employers disposed to exchange their whole produce against our manufactures, would it supply us with a sufficiency of specie to provide for our consumption of silk, broad cloths, lace, gloves, linen, &c. &c., and which yet would be necessary, since our neighbours would not take from us our manufactures in exchange? It is true, we shall have recourse to other countries, not the origin of the precious metals, but whose stock in circulation might be attracted into the stream of our commerce. But what a commanding and powerful influence must our remaining manufactures possess to be capable of drawing specie to provide the countries, excluding our commodities, yet expected to furnish us with their manufactures, to an amount not to be calculated! If we import ten millions of silk and broad cloth annually from France, shall we be able to increase the sale of cotton manufactures by reduced prices so as to procure specie for the value? But if the continent shall not abandon the exclusive system, no merchant will be found to say that the vent of cotton manufactures can be increased in other parts of the world to any important extent; no manufacturer will be able show that the price can be reduced to aid that vent; now that the raw material is here at half the price it costs in India,* that wages barely afford necessaries, and profits hardly exceed common interest. The contraction of our currency, which is to reduce price and to force exportation till a supply is procured of the precious metals, has boundaries which will defeat its end. The price of a manufacture must replace the raw material, the wages of labour, taxes, and profit :—if it be reduced so as not to leave sufficient for the last, the manufacturer must cease to buy foreign commodities; if so as to curtail wages, the labourer must cease to consume them. The enhancement of the currency cannot proceed beyond our metallic standard, and the value of that standard, compared with commodities, must bear a coequal relation with that of the precious metals throughout the world, compared with the same commodities. We cannot, accordingly, reduce the value of the above named component parts of the price of a manufacture beyond a certain limit. The value, for instance, of raw cotton, wool, and provisions (which last chiefly constitute wages) must repay the agriculturist who produces them, wherever he be, his capital, labour, rent, taxes, and profit; as estimated in his own country in the same metallic reduction of price, can, in fact, be counted upon in manufactures to avail in the extension of their vent, except arising from a very currency. No * It may be worth recording, that the stock of East India cotton wool in this country, during the last two years, accumulated by the mere course of trade, has been from 2 to 300,000 bales, and the price 6d per lb. while in Bengal it is 12d. different different cause than contraction of the currency, namely, from more compendious processes, or inventions to save labour. But in legislating on freedom of trade we can reckon but little on such a contingency; and still less perhaps in the actual advanced state of manufacturing industry. If the manufactures likely to remain in the country are not capable of much increase, where, we would again ask, is the capital displaced from the lost manufactures to meet employment? Political economists argue, not only as if capital were transferable at will, but they intimate that it is, at all times, equally productive. When urging freedom of commerce, they reason as if capital never were lost or decreased; as if it were one mass, like the waters of the ocean, moved continually but never diminished; and not, as it is actually found to be, fluctuating in quantity as well as form. Such part of the capital as could be preserved from the lost walks of industry might be transferred. Yet in the abandonment of the silk manufacture, the capital would find it probably more easy to remove to Lyons or to Turin in a like pursuit, than to Leeds or Manchester to a distinct branch. Attached to manufacturing capital is found its peculiar skill. The one gives the other effect. The proprietor of both united perseveres through dull and active times, and finds it his interest so to do; for the mutual services of capital and skill centre in his hands. Many of our manufacturers are as well acquainted with foreign countries as with remote parts of their own. Their partners and agents reside in all parts of the world. The transference of that part of capital sunk in an employment upon a locality, may, in the decay of industry, be impossible, and it must perish: but the moveable portion of capital coupled with technical skill, (which has been aptly termed moral capital,) although with difficulty to be removed to objects altogether different, yet may very easily be applied to a similar occupation, and where acquired habits will avail. At periods less favourable than the present, this transference of moveable wealth was not unusual. Much of the capital of Italy, conjoined with its peculiar industry, must have left it with its trade in the middle ages for the north of Europe: the Lombards were spread over the Netherlands, and were established in this country. The capital departed openly and not by compulsion, as that of the woollen manufacturers of the Low Countries, expelled by the oppressions of Spain; or that of the French silk-weavers by the revocation of the edict of Nantes: the measures we are examining seem to us fraught with this compulsory character, under the semblance of favour; and to conduce to the same effects of |