The Britons as an independent and separate nation wouldhenceforth take their national interest as the sole guide of theirpolicy.The Englishman, from predilection for his language, for hislaws, regulations, and habits, would whenever it was possibledevote his powers and his capital to develop his own nativeindustry, for which the system of free trade, by extending themarket for English manufactures over all countries, would offer himsufficient opportunity; he would not readily take a fancy toestablish manufactures in France or Germany.All excess of capitalin England would be at once devoted to trading with foreign partsof the world.If the Englishman took it into his head to emigrate,or to invest his capital elsewhere than in England, he would as henow does prefer those more distant countries where he would findalready existing his language, his laws, and regulations, ratherthan the benighted countries of the Continent.All England wouldthus be developed into one immense manufacturing city.Asia,Africa, and Australia would be civilised by England, and coveredwith new states modelled after the English fashion.In time a worldof English states would be formed, under the presidency of themother state, in which the European Continental nations would belost as unimportant, unproductive races.By this arrangement itwould fall to the lot of France, together with Spain and Portugal,to supply this English world with the choicest wines, and to drinkthe bad ones herself: at most France might retain the manufactureof a little millinery.Germany would scarcely have more to supplythis English world with than children's toys, wooden clocks, andphilological writings, and sometimes also an auxiliary corps, whomight sacrifice themselves to pine away in the deserts of Asia orAfrica, for the sake of extending the manufacturing and commercialsupremacy, the literature and language of England.It would notrequire many centuries before people in this English world wouldthink and speak of the Germans and French in the same tone as wespeak at present of the Asiatic nations.
True political science, however, regards such a result ofuniversal free trade as a very unnatural one; it will argue thathad universal free trade been introduced at the time of theHanseatic League, the German nationality instead of the Englishwould have secured an advance in commerce and manufacture over allother countries.
It would be most unjust, even on cosmopolitical grounds, now toresign to the English all the wealth and power of the earth, merelybecause by them the political system of commerce was firstestablished and the cosmopolitical principle for the most partignored.In order to allow freedom of trade to operate naturally,the less advanced nations must first be raised by artificialmeasures to that stage of cultivation to which the English nationhas been artificially elevated.In order that, through thatcosmopolitical tendency of the powers of production to which wehave alluded, the more distant parts of the world may not bebenefited and enriched before the neighbouring European countries,those nations which feel themselves to be capable, owing to theirmoral, intellectual, social, and political circumstances, ofdeveloping a manufacturing power of their own must adopt the systemof protection as the most effectual means for this purpose.Theeffects of this system for the purpose in view are of two kinds: inthe first place, by gradually excluding foreign manufacturedarticles from our markets, a surplus would be occasioned in foreignnations, of workmen, talents, and capital, which must seekemployment abroad; and secondly by the premium which our system ofprotection would offer to the immigration into our country ofworkmen, talents, and capital, that excess of productive powerwould be induced to find employment with us, instead of emigratingto distant parts of the world and to colonies.Political sciencerefers to history, and inquires whether England has not in formertimes drawn from Germany, Italy, Holland, France, Spain, andPortugal by these means a mass of proDuctive power.She asks: Whydoes the cosmopolitical school, when it pretends to weigh in thebalance the advantages and the disadvantages of the system ofprotection, utterly ignore this great and remarkable instance ofthe results of that system?
NOTES:
1.It is alleged that Adam Smith intended to have dedicated hisgreat work to Quesnay.-- TR.(See Life of Smith, published by T.
and J.Allman.1825.)
2.The Christian religion inculcates perpetual peace.But until thepromise, 'There shall be one fold and one shepherd,' has beenfulfilled, the principle of the Quakers, however true it be initself, can scarcely be acted upon.There is no better proof forthe Divine origin of the Christian religion than that its doctrinesand promises are in perfect agreement with the demands of both thematerial and spiritual well-being of the human race.
3.This statement was probably accurate up to the period when Listwrote, but a notable exception to it may now be adduced.Thecommercial union of the various German states under the Zollvereinpreceded by many years their political union under the Empire, andpowerfully promoted it.-- TR.
