prohibited, in return, the importation of English
woollens. In 1700, the prohibition of
importing bone lace into England was taken
off, upon condition that the importation of
English woollens into Flanders should be put
on the same footing as before.
There may be good policy in retaliations of
this kind, when there is a probability that they
will procure the repeal of the high duties or
prohibitions complained of. The recovery of
a great foreign market will generally more
than compensate the transitory inconveniency
of paying dearer during a short time for some
sorts of goods. To judge whether such retaliations
are likely to produce such an effect,
does not, perhaps, belong so much to the
science of a legislator, whose deliberations
ought to be governed by general principles,
which are always the same, as to the skill of
that insidious and crafty animal vulgarly called
a statesman or politician, whose councils
are directed by the momentary fluctuations of
affairs. When there is no probability that any
such repeal can be procured, it seems a bad
method of compensating the injury done to
certain classes of our people, to do another injury
ourselves, not only to those classes, but
to almost all the other classes of them. When
our neighbours prohibit some manufacture of
ours, we generally prohibit, not only the same,
for that alone would seldom affect them considerably,
but some other manufacture of
theirs. This may, no doubt, give encouragement
to some particular class of workmen
among ourselves, and, by excluding some of
their rivals, may enable them to raise their
price in the home market. Those workmen
however, who suffered by our neighbours prohibition,
will not be benefited by ours. On
the contrary, they, and almost all the other
classes of our citizens, will thereby be obliged
to pay dearer than before for certain goods.
Every such law, therefore, imposes a real tax
upon the whole country, not in favour of that
particular class of workmen who were injured
by our neighbours prohibitions, but of some
other class.
The case in which it may sometimes be a
matter of deliberation, how far, or in what
manner, it is proper to restore the free importation
of foreign goods, after it has been for
some time interrupted, is when particular manufactures,
by means of high duties or prohibitions
upon all foreign goods which can come
into competition with them, have been so far
extended as to employ a great multitude of
hands. Humanity may in this case require
that the freedom of trade should be restored
only by slow gradations, and with a good deal
of reserve and circumspection. Were those
high duties and prohibitions taken away all at
once, cheaper foreign goods of the same kind
might be poured so fast into the home market,
as to deprive all at once many thousands of
our people of their ordinary employment and
means of subsistence. The disorder which
this would occasion might no doubt be very
considerable. It would in all probability,
however, be much less than is commonly imagined,
for the two following reasons.
First, All those manufactures of which any
part is commonly exported to other European
countries without a bounty, could be very little
affected by the freest importation of foreign
goods. Such manufactures must be sold as
cheap abroad as any other foreign goods of the
same quality and kind, and consequently must
be sold cheaper at home. They would still,
therefore, keep possession of the home market;
and though a capricious man of fashion
might sometimes prefer foreign wares, merely
because they were foreign, to cheaper and better
goods of the same kind that were made at
home, this folly could, from the nature of
things, extend to so few, that it could make no
sensible impression upon the general employment
of the people. But a great part of all
the different branches of our woollen manufacture,
of our tanned leather, and of our
hardware, are annually exported to other European
countries without any bounty, and
these are the manufactures which employ the
greatest number of hands. The silk, perhaps,
is the manufacture which would suffer the
most by this freedom of trade, and after it the
linen, though the latter much less than the
former.
Secondly, Though a great number of people
should, by thus restoring the freedom of trade,
be thrown all at once out of their ordinary
employment and common method of subsistence,
it would by no means follow that they
would thereby be deprived either of employment
or subsistence. By the reduction of the
army and navy at the end of the late war,
more than 100,000 soldiers and seamen, a
number equal to what is employed in the
greatest manufactures, were all at once thrown
out of their ordinary employment: but though
they no doubt suffered some inconveniency,
they were not thereby deprived of all employment
and subsistence. The greater part of
the seamen, it is probable, gradually betook
themselves to the merchant service as they
could find occasion, and in the mean time both
they and the soldiers were absorbed in the
great mass of the people, and employed in a
great variety of occupations. Not only no
great convulsion, but no sensible disorder, arose
from so great a change in the situation of
more than 100,000 men, all accustomed to
the use of arms, and many of them to rapine
and plunder. The number of vagrants was
scarce anywhere sensibly increased by it; even
the wages of labour were not reduced by it in
any occupation, so far as I have been able to
learn, except in that of seamen in the merchant
service. But if we compare together the habits
of a soldier and of any sort of manufacturer,
we shall find that those of the latter do