altogether. The cheapness of the manufactures
of those landed nations, in consequence
of the gradual improvements of art and skill,
would, in due time, extend their sale beyond
the home market, and carry them to many
foreign markets, from which they would, in
the same manner, gradually justle out many
of the manufacturers of such mercantile nations.
This continual increase, both of the rude
and manufactured produce of those landed
nations, would, in due time, create a greater
capital than could, with the ordinary rate of
profit, be employed either in agriculture or in
manufactures. The surplus of this capital
would naturally turn itself to foreign trade,
and be employed in exporting, to foreign
countries, such parts of the rude and manufactured
produce of its own country, as exceeded
the demand of the home market. In
the exportation of the produce of their own
country, the merchants of a landed nation
would have an advantage of the same kind
over those of mercantile nations, which its artificers
and manufacturers had over the artificers
and manufacturers of such nations; the
advantage of finding at home that cargo, and
those stores and provisions, which the others
were obliged to seek for at a distance. With
inferior art and skill in navigation, therefore,
they would be able to sell that cargo as cheap
in foreign markets as the merchants of such
mercantile nations; and with equal art and
skill they would be able to sell it cheaper.
They would soon, therefore, rival those mercantile
nations in this branch of foreign trade,
and, in due time, would justle them out of it
altogether.
According to this liberal and generous system,
therefore, the most advantageous method
in which a landed nation can raise up
artificers, manufacturers, and merchants of its
own, is to grant the most perfect freedom of
trade to the artificers, manufacturers, and
merchants of all other nations. It thereby
raises the value of the surplus produce of its
own land, of which the continual increase
gradually establishes a fund, which, in due
time, necessarily raises up all the artificers,
manufacturers, and merchants, whom it has
occasion for.
When a landed nation on the contrary, oppresses,
either by high duties or by prohibitions,
the trade of foreign nations, it necessarily
hurts its own interest in two different
ways. First, by raising the price of all foreign
goods, and of all sorts of manufactures,
it necessarily sinks the real value of the surplus
produce of its own land, with which, or,
what comes to the same thing, with the price
of which, it purchases those foreign goods and
manufactures. Secondly, by giving a sort of
monopoly of the home market to its own merchants,
artificers, and manufacturers, it raises
the rate of mercantile and manufacturing profit,
in proportion to that of agricultural profit;
and, consequently, either draws from
agriculture a part of the capital which had
before been employed in it, or hinders from
going to it a part of what would otherwise
have gone to it. This policy, therefore, discourages
agriculture in two different ways;
first, by sinking the real value of its produce,
and thereby lowering the rate of its profits;
and, secondly, by raising the rate of profit in
all other employments. Agriculture is rendered
less advantageous, and trade and manufactures
more advantageous, than they otherwise
would be; and every man is tempted by his
own interest to turn, as much as he can, both
his capital and his industry from the former
to the latter employments.
Though, by this oppressive policy, a landed
nation should be able to raise up artificers,
manufacturers, and merchants of its own,
somewhat sooner than it could do by the freedom
of trade; a matter, however, which is
not a little doubtful; yet it would raise them
up, if one may say so, prematurely, and before
it was perfectly ripe for them. By raising
up too hastily one species of industry, it
would depress another more valuable species
of industry. By raising up too hastily a species
of industry which only replaces the stock
which employs it, together with the ordinary
profit, it would depress a species of industry
which, over and above replacing that stock,
with its profit, affords likewise a neat produce,
a free rent to the landlord. It would
depress productive labour, by encouraging too
hastily that labour which is altogether barren
and unproductive.
In what manner, according to this system,
the sum total of the annual produce of the
land is distributed among the three classes
above mentioned, and in what manner the labour
of the unproductive class does no more
than replace the value of its own consumption,
without increasing in any respect the
value of that sum total, is represented by Mr
Quesnai, the very ingenious and profound
author of this system, in some arithmetical
formularies. The first of these formularies,
which, by way of eminence, he peculiarly distinguishes
by the name of the Economical
Table, represents the manner in which he supposes
this distribution takes place, in a state
of the most perfect liberty, and, therefore, of
the highest prosperity; in a state where the
annual produce is such as to afford the greatest
possible neat produce, and where each
class enjoys its proper share of the whole annual
produce. Some subsequent formularies
represent the manner in which he supposes
this distribution is made in different states of
restraint and regulation; in which, either the
class of proprietors, or the barren and unproductive
class, is more favoured than the class
of cultivators; and in which either the one or
the other encroaches, more or less, upon the