Was England a fool in so acting? Most assuredly, according tothe theories of Adam Smith and J.B.Say the Theory of Values.For,according to them, England should have bought what she requiredwhere she could buy them cheapest and best: it was an act of follyto manufacture for herself goods at a greater cost than she couldbuy them at elsewhere, and at the same time give away thatadvantage to the Continent.
The case is quite the contrary, according to our theory, whichwe term the Theory of the Powers of Production, and which theEnglish Ministry, without having examined the foundation on whichit rests, yet practically adopted when enforcing their maxim ofimporting produce and exporting fabrics.
The English Ministers cared not for the acquisition oflow-priced and perishable articles of manufacture, but for that ofa more costly but enduring manufacturing power.
They have attained their object in a brilliant degree.At thisday England produces seventy million pounds' worth of cotton andsilk goods, and supplies all Europe, the entire world, India itselfincluded, with British manufactures.Her home production exceeds byfifty or a hundred times the value of her former trade in Indianmanufactured goods.
What would it have profited her had she been buying for acentury the cheap goods of Indian manufacture?
And what have they gained who purchased those goods so cheaplyof her? The English have gained power, incalculable power, whilethe others have gained the reverse of power.
That in the face of results like these, historically attestedupon unimpeachable evidence, Adam Smith should have expressed sowarped a judgment upon the Navigation Laws, can only be accountedfor upon the same principle on which we shall in another chapterexplain this celebrated author's fallacious conclusions respectingcommercial restrictions.These facts stood in the way of his petnotion of unrestricted free trade.It was therefore necessary forhim to obviate the objection that could be adduced against hisprinciple from the effects of the Navigation Laws, by drawing adistinction between their political objects and their economicalobjects.He maintained that, although the Navigation Laws had beenpolitically necessary and beneficial, yet that they wereeconomically prejudicial and injurious.How little this distinctioncan be justified by the nature of things or by experience, we trustto make apparent in the course of this treatise.
J.B.Say, though he might have known better from theexperience of North America, here too, as in every instance wherethe principles of free trade and protection clash, goes stillfarther than his predecessor.Say reckons up what the cost of asailor to the French nation is, owing to the fishery bounties, inorder to show how wasteful and unremunerative these bounties are.
The subject of restrictions upon navigation constitutes aformidable stumbling-block in the path of the advocates ofunrestricted free trade, which they are only too glad to pass overin silence, especially if they are members of the mercantilecommunity in seaport towns.
