circulates, there is little to be got; but that
where a great deal is in motion, some share
of it may fall to them. The same maxim
which would in this manner direct the common
sense of one, or ten, or twenty individuals,
should regulate the judgment of one,
or ten, or twenty millions, and should make
a whole nation regard the riches of its neighbours,
as a probable cause and occasion for itself
to acquire riches. A nation that would
enrich itself by foreign trade, is certainly most
likely to do so, when its neighbours are all
rich, industrious and commercial nations. A
great nation, surrounded on all sides by wandering
savages and poor barbarians, might, no
doubt, acquire riches by the cultivation of its
own lands, and by its own interior commerce,
but not by foreign trade. It seems to have
been in this manner that the ancient Egyptians
and the modern Chinese acquired their
great wealth. The ancient Egyptians, it is
said, neglected foreign commerce, and the modern
Chinese, it is known, hold it in the utmost
contempt, and scarce deign to afford it
the decent protection of the laws. The modern
maxims of foreign commerce, by aiming
at the impoverishment of all our neighbours,
so far as they are capable of producing their
intended effect, tend to render that very commerce
insignificant and contemptible.
It is in consequence of these maxims, that
the commerce between France and England
has, in both countries, been subjected to so
many discouragements and restraints. If those
two countries, however, were to consider their
real interest, without either mercantile jealousy
or national animosity, the commerce of France
might be more advantageous to Great Britain
than that of any other country, and, for the
same reason, that of Great Britain to France.
France is the nearest neighbour to Great Britain.
In the trade between the southern coast
of England and the northern and north-western
coast of France, the returns might be expected,
in the same manner as in the inland
trade, four, five, or six times in the year. The
capital, therefore, employed in this trade could,
in each of the two countries, keep in motion
four, five, or six times the quantity of industry,
and afford employment and subsistence
to four, five, or six times the number of people,
which an equal capital could do in the
greater part of the other branches of foreign
trade. Between the parts of France and Great
Britain most remote from one another, the
returns might be expected, at least, once in
the year; and even this trade would so far be
at least equally advantageous, as the greater
part of the other branches of our foreign European
trade. It would be, at least, three
times more advantageous than the boasted
trade with our North American colonies, in
which the returns were seldom made in less
than three years, frequently not in less than
four or five years. France, besides, is supposed
to contain 24,000,000 of inhabitants.
Our North American colonies were never supposed
to contain more than 3,000,000; and
France is a much richer country than North
America; though, on account of the more
unequal distribution of riches, there is much
more poverty and beggary in the one country
than in the other. France, therefore, could
afford a market at least eight times more extensive,
and, on account of the superior frequency
of the returns, four-and-twenty times
more advantageous than that which our North
American colonies ever afforded. The trade
of Great Britain would be just as advantageous
to France, and, in proportion to the
wealth, population, and proximity of the respective
countries, would have the same superiority
over that which France carries on with
her own colonies. Such is the very great
difference between that trade which the wisdom
of both nations has thought proper to
discourage, and that which it has favoured the
most.
But the very same circumstances which
would have rendered an open and free commerce
between the two countries so advantageous
to both, have occasioned the principal
obstructions to that commerce. Being neighbours,
they are necessarily enemies, and the
wealth and power of each becomes, upon that
account, more formidable to the other; and
what would increase the advantage of national
friendship, serves only to inflame the violence
of national animosity. They are both rich and
industrious nations; and the merchants and
manufacturers of each dread the competition
of the skill and activity of those of the other.
Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames,
and is itself inflamed, by the violence
of national animosity, and the traders of both
countries have announced, with all the passionate
confidence of interested falsehood, the certain
ruin of each, in consequence of that unfavourable
balance of trade, which, they pretend,
would be the infallible effect of an unrestrained
commerce with the other.
There is no commercial country in Europe,
of which the approaching ruin has not frequently
been foretold by the pretended doctors
of this system, from an unfavourable balance
of trade. After all the anxiety, however,
which they have excited about this, after
all the vain attempts of almost all trading nations
to turn that balance in their own favour,
and against their neighbours, it does not appear
that any one nation in Europe has been,
in any respect, impoverished by this cause.
Every town and country, on the contrary, in
proportion as they have opened their ports to
all nations, instead of being ruined by this
free trade, as the principles of the commercial
system would lead us to expect, have been enriched
by it. Though there are in Europe,
indeed, a few towns which, in some respects,
deserve the name of free ports, there is no