If we maintain that the prohibitive system has been useful toFrance since 1815, we do not by that contention wish to defendeither her mistakes or her excess of protection, nor the utility ornecessity of her continued maintenance of that excessive protectivepolicy.It was an error for France to restrict the importation ofraw materials and agricultural products (pig-iron, coal, wool,corn, cattle) by import duties; it would be a further error ifFrance, after her manufacturing power has become sufficientlystrong and established, were not willing to revert gradually to amoderate system of protection, and by permitting a limited amountof competition incite her manufacturers to emulation.
In regard to protective duties it is especially important todiscriminate between the case of a nation which contemplatespassing from a policy of free competition to one of protection, andthat of a nation which proposes to exchange a policy of prohibitionfor one of moderate protection; in the former case the dutiesimposed at first must be low, and be gradually increased, in thelatter they must be high at first and be gradually diminished.
A nation which has been formerly insufficiently protected bycustoms duties, but which feels itself called upon to make greaterprogress in manufactures, must first of all endeavour to developthose manufactures which produce articles of general consumption.
In the first place the total value of such industrial products isincomparably greater than the total value of the much moreexpensive fabrics of luxury.The former class of manufactures,therefore, brings into motion large masses of natural, mental, andpersonal productive powers, and gives -- by the fact that itrequires large capital -- inducements for considerable saving ofcapital, and for bringing over to its aid foreign capital andpowers of all kinds.The development of these branches ofmanufacture thus tends powerfully to promote the increase ofpopulation, the prosperity of home agriculture, and also especiallythe increase of the trade with foreign countries, inasmuch as lesscultivated countries chiefly require manufactured goods of commonuse, and the countries of temperate climates are principallyenabled by the production of these articles to carry on directinterchange with the countries of tropical climates.A country e.g.
which trade has to import cotton yarns and cotton goods cannotcarry on direct with Egypt, Louisiana, or Brazil, because it cannotsupply those countries with the cotton goods which they require,and cannot take from them their raw cotton.Furthermore, thesearticles, on account of the magnitude of their total value, serveespecially to equalise the exports of the nation tolerably wellwith its imports, and always to retain in the nation the amount ofcirculating medium which it requires, or to provide it with thesame.Thus it is by the prosperity and preservation of theseimportant branches of industry that the industrial independence ofthe nation is gained and maintained, for the disturbance of traderesulting from wars is of little importance if it merely hindersthe purchase of expensive articles of luxury, but, on the otherhand, it always occasions great calamities if it is attended byscarcity and rise in price of common manufactured goods, and by theinterruption of a previously considerable sale of agriculturalproducts.Finally, the evasion of customs duties by smuggling andfalse declarations of value is much less to be feared in the caseof these articles, and can be much more easily prevented than inthe case of costly fabrics of luxury.
Manufactures and manufactories are always plants of slowgrowth, and every protective duty which suddenly breaks offformerly existing commercial connections must be detrimental to thenation for whose benefit it is professedly introduced.Such dutiesought only to be increased in the ratio in which capital, technicalabilities, and the spirit of enterprise are increasing in thenation or are being attracted to it from abroad, in the ratio inwhich the nation is in a condition to utilise for itself itssurplus of raw materials and natural products which it hadpreviously exported.It is, however, of special importance that thescale by which the import duties are increased should be determinedbeforehand, so that an assured remuneration can be offered to thecapitalists, artificers, and workmen, who are found in the nationor who can be attracted to it from abroad.It is indispensable tomaintain these scales of duty inviolably , and not to diminish thembefore the appointed time, because the very fear of any such breachof promise would already destroy for the most part the effect ofthat assurance of remuneration.
