The Manufacturing Power and Commerce
We have hitherto merely spoken of the relations betweenagriculture and manufactures, because they form the fundamentalingredients of the national production, and because, beforeobtaining a clear view of their mutual relations, it is impossibleto comprehend correctly the actual function and position ofcommerce.Commerce is also certainly productive (as the schoolmaintains); but it is so in quite a different manner fromagriculture and manufactures.These latter actually produce goods,commerce only brings about the exchange of the goods betweenagriculturists and manufacturers, between producers and consumers.
From this it follows that commerce must be regulated according tothe interests and wants of agriculture and manufactures, not vicevers?
But the school has exactly reversed this last dictum byadopting as a favourite expression the saying of old Gourney,'Laissez faire, laissez passer,' an expression which sounds no lessagreeably to robbers, cheats, and thieves than to the merchant, andis on that account rather doubtful as a maxim.This perversity ofsurrendering the interests of manufactures and agriculture to thedemands of commerce, without reservation, is a natural consequenceof that theory which everywhere merely takes into considerationpresent values, but nowhere the powers that produce them, andregards the whole world as but one indivisibie republic ofmerchants.The school does not discern that the merchant may beaccomplishing his purpose (viz.gain of values by exchange) at theexpense of the agriculturists and manufacturers, at the expense ofthe nation's productive powers, and indeed of its independence.Itis all the same to him; and according to the character of hisbusiness and occupation, he need not trouble himself muchrespecting the manner in which the goods imported or exported byhim act on the morality, the prosperity, or the power of thenation.He imports poisons as readily as medicines.He enervateswhole nations through opium and spirituous liquors.Whether he byhis importations and smugglings brings occupation and sustenance tohundreds of thousands, or whether they are thereby reduced tobeggary, does not signify to him as a man of business, if only hisown balance is increased thereby.Then if those who have beenreduced to want bread seek to escape the misery in their fatherlandby emigrating, he can still obtain profit by the business ofarranging their emigration.In the time of war he provides theenemy with arms and ammunition.He would, if it were possible, sellfields and meadows to foreign countries, and when he had sold thelast bit of land would place himself on board his ship and exporthimself.
It is therefore evident that the interest of individualmerchants and the interest of the commerce of a whole nation arewidely different things.In this sense Montesquieu has well said,'If the State imposes restrictions on the individual merchant, itdoes so in the interest of commerce, and his trade is nowhere morerestricted than in free and rich nations, and nowhere less so thanin nations governed by despots.'(1*) Commerce emanates frommanufactures and agriculture, and no nation which has not broughtwithin its own borders both these main branches of production to ahigh state of development can attain (in our days) to anyconsiderable amount of internal and external commerce.In formertimes there certainly existed separate cities or leagues of citieswhich were enabled by means of foreign manufacturers and foreignagriculturists to carry on a large exchange trade; but since thegreat agricultural manufacturing commercial states have sprung up,we can no longer think of originating a mere exchange trade such asthe Hanse Towns possessed.In any case such a trade is of soprecarious a character, that it hardly deserves consideration incomparison with that which is based on the nation's own production.
The most important objects of internal commerce are articles offood, salt, fuel, and building material, clothing materials, thenagricultural and manufacturing utensils and implements, and the rawmaterials of agricultural and mining production which are necessaryfor manufactures.The extent of this internal inter change isbeyond all comparison greater in a nation in which manufacturingindustry has attained a high stage of development than in a merelyagricultural nation.At times in the latter the agriculturist liveschiefly on his own productions.From want of much demand forvarious products and lack of means of transport, he is obliged toproduce for himself all his requirements without regard to what hisland is more specially fitted to produce; from want of means ofexchange he must manufacture himself the greater part of themanufactured articles which he requires.Fuel, building materials,provisions, and mineral products can find only a very limitedmarket because of the absence of improved means of transport, andhence cannot serve as articles for a distant trade.
Owing to the limited market and the limited demand for suchproducts, no inducement for storing them or for the accumulation ofcapital exists.Hence the capital devoted by mere agriculturalnations to internal commerce is almost nil; hence all articles ofproduction, which depend especially on good or bad weather, aresubject to extraordinary fluctuation in prices; hence the danger ofscarcity and famine is therefore greater the more any nationrestricts itself to agriculture.
