The disadvantages of such restrictions on the interchange ofproducts are still more clearly brought to light in the case ofEngland than in that of France.Through the corn laws, on doubt, aquantity of unfertile land is brought under cultivation; but it isa question whether these lands would not have been brought undercultivation without them.The more wool, timber, cattle, and cornthat England would have imported, the more manufactured goods wouldshe have sold, the greater number of workmen would have beenenabled to live in England, the higher would the prosperity of theworking classes have risen.England would probably have doubled thenumber of her workmen.Every single workman would have livedbetter, would have been better able to cultivate a garden for hispleasure and for the production of useful vegetables, and wouldhave supported himself and his family much better.It is evidentthat such a large augmentation of the working population, as wellas of its prosperity and of the amount of what it consumed, wouldhave produced an enormous demand for those products for which theisland possesses a natural monopoly, and it is more than probablethat thereby double and three times as much land could have beenbrought into cultivation than by unnatural restrictions.The proofof this may be seen in the vicinity of every large town.Howeverlarge the mass of products may be which is brought into this townfrom distant districts for miles around it, one cannot discover asingle tract of land uncultivated, however much that land may havebeen neglected by nature.If you forbid the importation into sucha town of corn from distant districts, you thereby merely effect adiminution of its population, of its manufacturing industry, andits prosperity, and compel the farmer who lives near the town todevote himself to less profitable culture.
It will be perceived that thus far we are quite in accord withthe prevailing theory.With regard to the interchange of rawproducts, the school is perfectly correct in supposing that themost extensive liberty of commerce is, under all circumstances,most advantageous to the individual as well as to the entire State.
One can, indeed, augment this production by restrictions; but theadvantage obtained thereby is merely apparent.We only therebydivert, as the school says, capital and labour into another andless useful channel.But the manufacturing productive power, on thecontrary, is governed by other laws, which have, unfortunately,entirely escaped the observation of the school.
