from importing to us the goods of any other
European country.
Thirdly, A great variety of the most bulky
articles of importation are prohibited from
being imported, even in British ships, from
any country but that in which they are produced,
under pain of forfeiting ship and cargo.
This regulation, too, was probably intended
against the Dutch. Holland was then,
as now, the great emporium for all European
goods; and by this regulation, British ships
were hindered from loading in Holland the
goods of any other European country.
Fourthly, Salt fish of all kinds, whale-fins,
whalebone, oil, and blubber, not caught by
and cured on board British vessels, when imported
into Great Britain, are subject to double
aliens duty. The Dutch, as they are still
the principal, were then the only fishers in
Europe that attempted to supply foreign nations
with fish. By this regulation, a very
heavy burden was laid upon their supplying
Great Britain.
When the act of navigation was made,
though England and Holland were not actually
at war, the most violent animosity subsisted
between the two nations. It had begun
during the government of the long parliament,
which first framed this act, and it
broke out soon after in the Dutch wars, during
that of the Protector and of Charles II.
It is not impossible, therefore, that some of
the regulations of this famous act may have
proceeded from national animosity. They
are as wise, however, as if they had all been
dictated by the most deliberate wisdom. National
animosity, at that particular time, aimed
at the very same object which the most deliberate
wisdom would have recommended,
the diminution of the naval power of Holland,
the only naval power which could endanger
the security of England.
The act of navigation is not favourable to
foreign commerce, or to the growth of that
opulence which can arise from it. The interest
of a nation, in its commercial relations to
foreign nations, is, like that of a merchant with
regard to the different people with whom he
deals, to buy as cheap, and to sell as dear as
possible. But it will be most likely to buy
cheap, when, by the most perfect freedom of
trade, it encourages all nations to bring to it
the goods which it has occasion to purchase;
and, for the same reason, it will be most likely
to sell dear, when its markets are thus filled
with the greatest number of buyers. The
act of navigation, it is true, lays no burden
upon foreign ships that come to export the
produce of British industry. Even the ancient
aliens duty, which used to be paid upon
all goods, exported as well as imported,
has, by several subsequent acts, been taken off
from the greater part of the articles of exportation.
But if foreigners, either by prohibitions
or high duties, are hindered from coming
to sell, they cannot always afford to come
to buy; because, coming without a cargo, they
must lose the freight from their own country
to Great Britain. By diminishing the
number of sellers, therefore, we necessarily
diminish that of buyers, and are thus likely
not only to buy foreign goods dearer, but to
sell our own cheaper, than if there was a more
perfect freedom of trade. As defence, however,
is of much more importance than opulence,
the act of navigation is, perhaps, the
wisest of all the commercial regulations of
England.
The second case, in which it will generally
be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign
for the encouragement of domestic industry,
is when some tax is imposed at home
upon the produce of the latter. In this case,
it seems reasonable that an equal tax should
be imposed upon the like produce of the former.
This would not give the monopoly of
the home market to domestic industry, nor
turn towards a particular employment a greater
share of the stock and labour of the country,
than what would naturally go to it. It
would only hinder any part of what would
naturally go to it from being turned away by
the tax into a less natural direction, and would
leave the competition between foreign and domestic
industry, after the tax, as nearly as
possible upon the same footing as before it.
In Great Britain, when any such tax is laid
upon the produce of domestic industry, it is
usual, at the same time, in order to stop the
clamorous complaints of our merchants and
manufacturers, that they will be undersold at
home, to lay a much heavier duty upon the
importation of all foreign goods of the same
kind.
This second limitation of the freedom of
trade, according to some people, should, upon
most occasions, be extended much farther than
to the precise foreign commodities which could
come into competition with those which had
been taxed at home. When the necessaries
of life have been taxed in any country, it becomes
proper, they pretend, to tax not only
the like necessaries of life imported from other
countries, but all sorts of foreign goods
which can come into competition with any
thing that is the produce of domestic industry.
Subsistence, they say, becomes necessarily
dearer in consequence of such taxes; and
the price of labour must always rise with the
price of the labourer's subsistence. Every
commodity, therefore, which is the produce
of domestic industry, though not immediately
taxed itself, becomes dearer in consequence of
such taxes, because the labour which produces
it becomes so. Such taxes, therefore,
are really equivalent, they say, to a tax upon
every particular commodity produced at home.
In order to put domestic upon the same footing
with foreign industry, therefore, it becomes
necessary, they think, to lay some duty