国富论(中文导读英文版)(下册)(txt+pdf+epub+mobi电子书下载)

作者：（英）斯密（Smith,A.）

出版社：清华大学出版社

格式: AZW3, DOCX, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, TXT

国富论(中文导读英文版)(下册)试读：

前言

亚当·斯密（Adam Smith，1723—1790），英国著名古典政治经济学家、哲学家，现代西方经济学之父。1723年6月5日出生于苏格兰，青年时就读于牛津大学。1748—1751年，任爱丁堡大学讲师，讲授经济学。1751—1764年，任格拉斯哥大学哲学教授，1759年出版了他的首部巨著《道德情操论》（The Theory of Moral Sentiments），从而确立了他在学术界的地位和威望。1776年，出版了市场经济学巨著《国富论》（An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth Nations），该书创立了富国裕民的古典经济学体系，在经济思想史上具有划时代的意义。《道德情操论》和《国富论》两部学术名著所取得的巨大成就及其对社会发展所产生的深远影响，给格拉斯哥大学增添了光彩。为此，格拉斯哥大学于1787年和1788年两次推选亚当·斯密任该校名誉校长，给予了他极高的荣誉。1790年7月17日，亚当·斯密在爱丁堡与世长辞。《道德情操论》和《国富论》是亚当·斯密留给世人的巨大精神财富，他在《国富论》中创立了“富国裕民”的古典经济学体系，而在《道德情操论》中则缔造了以“公民的幸福生活”为目标的伦理思想体系。

相比《道德情操论》，《国富论》对世界的影响更大、更深远。与美国《独立宣言》同一年发表的《国富论》是现代政治经济学研究的起点，它对近代社会，特别是对资本主义社会的发展起到了重大的促进作用。这是一本将经济学、哲学、历史、政治理论和实践计划融合在一起的巨著，它的中心思想是，看似杂乱无章的自由市场实际上具有自动调节机制，这种机制使人们自动倾向于生产社会最迫切需要的商品。例如，如果某种需要的产品供应短缺，其价格自然会上升，价格上升会使生产商获得较高的利润，由于利润高，就会有更多的生产商生产这种产品。生产增加的结果是缓和原来的供应短缺，而且随着各个生产商之间的竞争，供应增长会使商品的价格降到“自然价格”，即其生产成本加上合理的利润。谁都不是有目的地通过消除短缺来帮助社会，但是问题却解决了。用亚当·斯密的话来说，就是每个人“只想得到自己的利益”，但是又好像“被一只无形的手牵着去实现一种他根本无意要实现的目的……他们促进社会的利益，其效果往往比他们真正想要实现的还要好。”但是如果自由竞争受到阻碍，那只“无形的手”就不会把工作做得恰到好处。因而斯密相信自由贸易，为坚决反对高关税而申辩。事实上他也坚决反对政府对商业和自由市场的干涉。他声言这样的干涉几乎总要降低经济效率，最终使公众付出较高的代价。这些都是市场经济的精髓、本质和基本纲要。亚当·斯密在《国富论》中所表现出来的经济思想体系结构严密，论证有力。亚当·斯密之后的经济学家，如托马斯·马尔萨斯和大卫·李嘉图等对他的体系进行了精心的充实和修正，今天被称为经典经济学体系。虽然现代经济学说又增加了新的概念和方法，但这些大体说来都是经典经济学的自然产物。《国富论》一书技巧高超、文笔清晰，拥有广泛的读者。斯密反对政府干涉商业和商业事务、赞成低关税和自由贸易的观点在整个19世纪对政府政策都有决定性的影响。事实上他对这些政策的影响在今天的社会中，人们依然能够感觉出来。《国富论》问世200多年来，一直作为经济学各专业的学生和从事经济学研究的学者必读的经典著作，影响了一代又一代的经济学学者和国家经济政策的决策者。在中国，《国富论》同样是广大经济学专业和相关专业学生、学者和政府经济政策制定者的必读书籍。目前，在国内数量众多的《国富论》书籍中，主要的出版形式有两种，一种是中文翻译版，另一种是中英文对照版。而其中的中英文对照读本比较受读者的欢迎，这主要是得益于中国人热衷于学习英语的大环境。而从语文学习的角度来看，直接使用纯英文的学习资料更有利于英语学习。考虑到对英文内容背景的了解有助于英文阅读，使用中文导读应该是一种比较好的方式，也可以说是该类型书的第三种版本形式。采用中文导读而非中英文对照的方式进行编排，有利于国内读者摆脱阅读英文时对中文注释的依赖。基于以上原因，我们决定编译《国富论》，并采用中文导读英文版的形式出版。在中文导读中，我们尽力使其贴近原作的精髓。我们希望能够编出为当代中国读者所喜爱的经典读本。读者在阅读每个论述主题之前，可以先阅读中文导读内容，这样有利于了解论述的主题背景，从而加快阅读速度。我们相信，该经典著作的引进对加强当代中国读者，特别是大学生读者的专业修养和人文修养是非常有帮助的。

本书主要内容由纪飞、刘乃亚编译。参加本书素材搜集整理及编译工作的还有徐硕、郑佳、王勋、赵雪、左新杲、黄福成、冯洁、徐鑫、马启龙、王业伟、王旭敏、陈楠、王多多、邵舒丽、周丽萍、王晓旭、李永振、孟宪行、熊红华、李军、胡国平、熊建国、徐平国、王小红等。限于我们的文学素养和英文水平，书中一定会有一些不当之处，衷心希望读者朋友批评指正。第四篇　论政治经济学体系　BOOK Ⅳ　Of Systems of Political Economy第一章　论商业主义或重商主义的原理　Chapter Ⅰ　Of the Principle of the Commercial, or Mercantile System导读

货币是交易工具和价值尺度，货币能够交换其他商品，因此，财富被认为是由货币构成的，就如同游牧民族认为财富是由牲畜构成的一样。

洛克认为货币是财富中最稳固的部分，因此，增加货币是政治经济学的重点。而另一些人认为，虽然一国的实际贫富取决于消费品的丰富程度，但是对于海外关系密切或需要维持海外军队的国家来说，货币还是相当重要的。因此，金银被欧洲各国所看重，并且诸国都在极力积累金银，甚至采取禁止金银出口的政策。

但是这对商人来说是不方便的，因此，另一些学说兴起了。他们认为，第一，出口金银并不会减少金属的数量，因为进口的外国商品可以转卖从而赚上一笔。第二，禁令无法阻止金银出口，走私者到处都有空子可钻，而只有贸易差额才能决定金银的流动，禁止金银出口对于贸易逆差的国家来说更为不利。这些说法中有的是实话，有的则是无稽之谈。但是，政府却为之所动，一些国家允许了金银的自由出口，政府从严控金银出口转成严控贸易逆差，而真正带来国内繁荣的国内贸易则被置之不理。

事实上，金银是一种能够在市场中自由流动的商品，只要存在有效需求，金银甚至更容易流动，因为它的体积小，便于运输。而如果金银的数量超过有效需求，那么它就会自动流出。正因为金银能够流动，才使各地的金银价格是较为一致和较为稳定的。即使一国出现金银短缺，也可以通过以物易物或纸币等方法来弥补。

但是，对于货币短缺的抱怨却是司空见惯的，这并不是因为货币真的短缺，而是因为过度贸易使得人们手中既没有货币又无法借贷。hat wealth consists in money, or and silver, is a popular notion which naturally arises from the double function of money, as the Tinstrument of commerce, and as the measure of value. In consequence of its being the instrument of commerce, when we have money we can more readily obtain whatever else we have occasion for, than by means of any other commodity.The great affair, we always find, is to get money.When that is obtained, there is no difficulty in making any subsequent purchase.In consequence of its being the measure of value, we estimate that of all other commodities by the quantity of money which they will exchange for.We say of a rich man that he is worth a great deal, and of a poor man that he is worth very little money.A frugal man, or a man eager to be rich, is said to love money；and a careless, a generous, or a profuse man, is said to be indifferent about it.To grow rich is to get money；and wealth and money, in short, are, in common language, considered as in every respect synonymous.

A rich country, in the same manner as a rich man, is supposed to be a country abounding in money；and to heap up gold and saver in any country is supposed to be the readiest way to enrich it. For some time after the discovery of America, the first inquiry of the Spaniards, when they arrived upon an unknown coast, used to be, if there was any gold or silver to be found in the neighbourhood？By the information which they received, they judged whether it was worth while to make a settlement there, or if the country was worth the conquering.Plano Carpino, a monk sent ambassador from the King of France to one of the sons of the famous Genghis Khan, says that the Tartars used frequently to ask him, if there was plenty of sheep and oxen in the kingdom of France？Their inquiry had the same object with that of the Spaniards.They wanted to know if the country was rich enough to be worth the conquering.Among the Tartars, as among all other nations of shepherds, who are generally ignorant of the use of money, cattle are the instruments of commerce and the measures of value.Wealth, therefore, according to them, consisted in cattle, as according to the Spaniards it consisted in gold and silver.Of the two, the Tartar notion, perhaps, was the nearest to the truth.

Mr. Locke remarks a distinction between money and other movable goods.All other movable goods, he says, are of so consumable a nature that the wealth which consists in them cannot be much depended on, and a nation which abounds in them one year may, without any exportation, but merely by their own waste and extravagance, be in great want of them the next.Money, on the contrary, is a steady friend, which, though it may travel about from hand to hand, yet if it can be kept from going out of the country, is not very liable to be wasted and consumed.Gold and silver, therefore, are, according to him, the most solid and substantial part of the movable wealth of a nation, and to multiply those metals ought, he thinks, upon that account, to be the great object of its political economy.

Others admit that if a nation could be separated from all the world, it would be of no consequence how much, or how little money circulated in it. The consumable goods which were circulated by means of this money, would only be exchanged for a greater or a smaller number of pieces；but the real wealth or poverty of the country, they allow, would depend altogether upon the abundance or scarcity of those consumable goods.But it is otherwise, they think, with countries which have connections with foreign nations, and which are obliged to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries.This, they say, cannot be done, but by sending abroad money to pay them with；and a nation cannot send much money abroad, unless it has a good deal at home.Every such nation, therefore, must endeavour in time of peace to accumulate gold and silver, that, when occasion requires, it may have wherewithal to carry on foreign wars.

In consequence of these popular notions, all the different nations of Europe have studied, though to little purpose, every possible means of accumulating gold and silver in their respective countries. Spain and Portugal, the proprietors of the principal mines which supply Europe with those metals, have either prohibited their exportation under the severest penalties, or subjected it to a considerable duty.The like prohibition seems anciently to have made a part of the policy of most other European nations.It is even to be found, where we should least of all expect to find it, in some old Scotch acts of Parliament, which forbid under heavy penalties the carrying gold or silver forth of the kingdom.The like policy anciently took place both in France and England.

When those countries became commercial, the merchants found this prohibition, upon many occasions, extremely inconvenient. They could frequently buy more advantageously with gold and silver than with any other commodity, the foreign goods which they wanted, either to import into their own, or to carry to some other foreign country.They remonstrated, therefore, against this prohibition as hurtful to trade.

They represented, first, that the exportation of gold and silver in order to purchase foreign goods, did not always diminish the quantity of those metals in the kingdom. That, on the contrary, it might frequently increase that quantity；because, if the consumption of foreign goods was not thereby increased in the country, those goods might be re-exported to foreign countries, and, being there sold for a large profit, might bring back much more treasure than was originally sent out to purchase them.Mr.Mun compares this operation of foreign trade to the seed-time and harvest of agriculture.“If we only behold，”says he，“the actions of the husbandman in the seed-time, when he casteth away much good corn into the ground, we shall account him rather a madman than a husbandman.But when we consider his labours in the harvest, which is the end of his endeavours, we shall find the worth and plentiful increase of his action.”

They represented, secondly, that this prohibition could not hinder the exportation of gold and silver, which, on account of the smallness of their bulk in proportion to their value, could easily be smuggled abroad.That this exportation could only be prevented by a proper attention to, what they called, the balance of trade.That when the country exported to a greater value than it imported, a balance became due to it from foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to it in gold and silver, and thereby increased the quantity of those metals in the kingdom.But that when it imported to a greater value than it exported, a contrary balance became due to foreign nations, which was necessarily paid to them in the same manner, and thereby diminished that quantity.That in this case to prohibit the exportation of those metals could not prevent it, but only by making it more dangerous, render it more expensive.That the exchange was thereby turned more against the country which owed the balance, than it otherwise might have been；the merchant who purchased a bill upon the foreign country being obliged to pay the banker who sold it, not only for the natural risk, trouble and expense of sending the money thither, but for the extraordinary risk arising from the prohibition.But that the more the exchange was against any country, the more the balance of trade became necessarily against it；the money of that country becoming necessarily of so much less value, in comparison with that of the country to which the balance was due.That if the exchange between England and Holland, for example, was five per cent.against England, it would require a hundred and five ounces of silver in England to purchase a bill for a hundred ounces of silver in Holland：that a hundred and five ounces of silver in England, therefore, would be worth only a hundred ounces of silver in Holland, and would purchase only a proportionable quantity of Dutch goods；but that a hundred ounces of silver in Holland, on the contrary, would be worth a hundred and five ounces in England, and would purchase a proportionable quantity of English goods：that the English goods which were sold to Holland would be sold so much cheaper；and the Dutch goods which were sold to England, so much dearer, by the difference of the exchange；that the one would draw so much less Dutch money to England, and the other so much more English money to Holland, as this difference amounted to：and that the balance of trade, therefore, would necessarily be so much more against England, and would require a greater balance of gold and silver to be exported to Holland.

Those arguments were partly solid and partly sophistical. They were solid so far as they asserted that the exportation of gold and silver in trade might frequently be advantageous to the country.They were solid too, in asserting that no prohibition could prevent their exportation, when private people found any advantage in exporting them.But they were sophistical in supposing, that either to preserve or to augment the quantity of those metals required more the attention of government, than to preserve or to augment the quantity of any other useful commodities, which the freedom of trade, without any such attention, never fails to supply in the proper quantity.They were sophistical too, perhaps, in asserting that the high price of exchange necessarily increased what they called, the unfavourable balance of trade, or occasioned the exportation of a greater quantity of gold and silver.That high price, indeed, was extremely disadvantageous to the merchants who had any money to pay in foreign countries.They paid so much dearer for the bills which their bankers granted them upon those countries.But though the risk arising from the prohibition might occasion some extraordinary expense to the bankers, it would not necessarily carry any more money out of the country.This expense would generally be all laid out in the country, in smuggling the money out of it, and could seldom occasion the exportation of a single six-pence beyond the precise sum drawn for.The high price of exchange too would naturally dispose the merchants to endeavour to make their exports nearly balance their imports, in order that they might have this high exchange to pay upon as small a sum as possible.The high price of exchange, besides, must necessarily have operated as a tax, in raising the price of foreign goods, and thereby diminishing their consumption.It would tend, therefore, not to increase, but to diminish, what they called, the unfavourable balance of trade, and consequently the exportation of gold and silver.

Such as they were, however, those arguments convinced the people to whom they were addressed. They were addressed by merchants to parliaments, and to the councils of princes, to nobles, and to country gentlemen；by those who were supposed to understand trade, to those who were conscious to themselves that they knew nothing about the matter.That foreign trade enriched the country, experience demonstrated to the nobles and country gentlemen, as well as to the merchants；but how, or in what manner, none of them well knew.The merchants knew perfectly in what manner it enriched themselves.It was their business to know it.But to know in what manner it enriched the country, was no part of their business.This subject never came into their consideration, but when they had occasion to apply to their country for some change in the laws relating to foreign trade.It then became necessary to say something about the beneficial effects of foreign trade, and the manner in which those effects were obstructed by the laws as they then stood.To the judges who were to decide the business, it appeared a most satisfactory account of the matter, when they were told that foreign trade brought money into the country, but that the laws in question hindered it from bringing so much as it otherwise would do.Those arguments therefore produced the wished-for effect.The prohibition of exporting gold and silver was in France and England confined to the coin of those respective countries.The exportation of foreign coin and of bullion was made free.In Holland, and in some other places, this liberty was extended even to the coin of the country.The attention of government was turned away from guarding against the exportation of gold and silver, to watch over the balance of trade, as the only cause which could occasion any augmentation or diminution of those metals.From one fruitless care it was turned away to another care much more intricate, much more embarrassing, and just equally fruitless.The title of Mun's book, England's Treasure in Foreign Trade, became a fundamental maxim in the political economy, not of England only, but of all other commercial countries.The inland, or home trade, the most important of all, the trade in which an equal capital affords the greatest revenue, and creates the greatest employment to the people of the country, was considered as subsidiary only to foreign trade.It neither brought money into the country, it was said, nor carried any out of it.The country therefore could never become either richer or poorer by means of it, except so far as its prosperity or decay might indirectly influence the state of foreign trade.

A country that has no mines of its own must undoubtedly draw its gold and silver from foreign countries in the same manner as one that has no vineyards of its own must draw its wines. It does not seem necessary, however, that the attention of government should be more turned towards the one than towards the other object.A country that has wherewithal to buy wine, will always get the wine which it has occasion for；and a country that has wherewithal to buy gold and silver, will never be in want of those metals.They are to be bought for a certain price like all other commodities, and as they are the price of all other commodities, so all other commodities are the price of those metals.We trust with perfect security that the freedom of trade, without any attention of government, will always supply us with the wine which we have occasion for：and we may trust with equal security that it will always supply us with all the gold and silver which we can afford to purchase or to employ, either in circulating our commodities, or in other uses.

The quantity of every commodity which human industry can either purchase or produce, naturally regulates itself in every country according to the effectual demand, or according to the demand of those who are willing to pay the whole rent, labour and profits which must be paid in order to prepare and bring it to market. But no commodities regulate themselves more easily or more exactly according to this effectual demand than gold and silver；because, on account of the small bulk and great value of those metals, no commodities can be more easily transported from one place to another, from the places where they are cheap, to those where they are dear, from the places where they exceed, to those where they fall short of this effectual demand.If there were in England, for example, an effectual demand for an additional quantity of gold, a packet-boat could bring from Lisbon, or from wherever else it was to be had, fifty tuns of gold, which could be coined into more than five millions of guineas.But if there were an effectual demand for grain to the same value, to import it would require, at five guineas a tun, a million of tuns of shipping, or a thousand ships of a thousand tuns each.The navy of England would not be sufficient.

When the quantity of gold and silver imported into any country exceeds the effectual demand, no vigilance of government can prevent their exportation. All the sanguinary laws of Spain and Portugal are not able to keep their gold and silver at home.The continual importations from Peru and Brazil exceed the effectual demand of those countries, and sink the price of those metals there below that in the neighbouring countries.If, on the contrary, in any particular country their quantity fell short of the effectual demand, so as to raise their price above that of the neighbouring countries, the government would have no occasion to take any pains to import them.If it were even to take pains to prevent their importation, it would not be able to effectuate it.Those metals, when the Spartans had got wherewithal to purchase them, broke through all the barriers which the laws of Lycurgus opposed to their entrance into Lacedemon.All the sanguinary laws of the customs are not able to prevent the importation of the teas of the Dutch and Gottenburgh East India Companies, because somewhat cheaper than those of the British company.A pound of tea, however, is about a hundred times the bulk of one of the highest prices, sixteen shillings, that is commonly paid for it in silver, and more than two thousand times the bulk of the same price in gold, and consequently just so many times more difficult to smuggle.

It is partly owing to the easy transportation of gold and silver from the places where they abound to those where they are wanted, that the price of those metals does not fluctuate continually like that of the greater part of other commodities, which are hindered by their bulk from shifting their situation, when the market happens to be either over or under-stocked with them. The.price of those metals, indeed, is not altogether exempted from variation, but the changes to which it is liable are generally slow, gradual, and uniform.In Europe, for example, it is supposed, without much foundation, perhaps, that during the course of the present and preceding century, they have been constantly, but gradually, sinking in their value, on account of the continual importations from the Spanish West Indies.But to make any sudden change in the price of gold and silver, so as to raise or lower at once, sensibly and remarkably, the money price of all other commodities, requires such a revolution in commerce as that occasioned by the discovery of America.

If, notwithstanding all this, gold and silver should at any time fall short in a country which has wherewithal to purchase them, there are more expedients for supplying their place, than that of almost any other commodity. If the materials of manufacture are wanted, industry must stop.If provisions are wanted, the people must starve.But if money is wanted, barter will supply its place, though with a good deal of inconveniency.Buying and selling upon credit, and the different dealers compensating their credits with one another, once a month or once a year, will supply it with less inconveniency.A well-regulated paper money will supply it, not only without any inconveniency, but, in some cases, with some advantages.Upon every account, therefore, the attention of government never was so unnecessarily employed, as when directed to watch over the preservation or increase of the quantity of money in any country.

No complaint, however, is more common than that of a scarcity of money. Money, like wine, must always be scarce with those who have neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it.Those who have either, will seldom be in want either of the money, or of the wine which they have occasion for.This complaint, however, of the scarcity of money, is not always confined to improvident spendthrifts.It is sometimes general through a whole mercantile town, and the country in its neighbourhood.Overtrading is the common cause of it.Sober men, whose projects have been disproportioned to their capitals, are as likely to have neither wherewithal to buy money, nor credit to borrow it, as prodigals whose expense has been disproportioned to their revenue.Before their projects can be brought to bear, their stock is gone, and their credit with it.They run about everywhere to borrow money, and everybody tells them that they have none to lend.Even such general complaints of the scarcity of money do not always prove that the usual number of gold and silver pieces are not circulating in the country, but that many people want those pieces who have nothing to give for them.When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.They do not always send more money abroad than usual, but they buy upon credit both at home and abroad, an unusual quantity of goods, which they send to some distant market, in hopes that the returns will come in before the demand for payment.The demand comes before the returns, and they have nothing at hand, with which they can either purchase money, or give solid security for borrowing.It is not any scarcity of gold and silver, but the difficulty which such people find in borrowing, and which their creditors find in getting payment, that occasions the general complaint of the scarcity of money.

货币是国家资本中的一小部分，而且很少产生利润。只是因为货币是交易工具，并且易于保存，所以拥有货币更能给人以安全感，商人更倾向于以货换钱。但是，从总体来说，货币必须交易到货物才有价值，对货币的渴求实际上是渴求它所能交易到的货物。

消费品是为了满足使用的需求，而无须囤积居奇。同理，积累大量金银也是没有必要的。如果金银的数量超过了需求，其用途就无法实现，并且将不可避免地流往国外。

即使是为了支持海外战争，也没有必要大量积累金银，因为对于海外驻军，除了供给金银，还可以将制成品和天然产物运往海外。而一国积累的金银无外乎用于流通的货币、私人金银器皿和国库积存三种用途，要从这三种途径中攒出金银来供给海外是相当困难的，而耗资巨大的战争事实上也不是靠积累的金银来应付的，而是通过出口商品来应付。政府与商人签约汇款，商人将商品带到国外出售，以支付所耗。精细的制造品最适合于该用途，因为它的体积较小而价值较大；而天然产物却难以担当此任，因为一国剩余的天然产物有限，且运输困难。中世纪的战争难以持久，正是因为没有精细制成品可以应付战争，国王必须积累金银方可一战。但是现在已无此必要，因此，如今囤积金银便是无谓之举。t would be too ridiculous to go about seriously to prove, that wealth does not consist in money, or in gold and silver；but in what money Ipurchases, and is valuable only for purchasing. Money, no doubt, makes always a part of the national capital；but it has already been shown that it generally makes but a small part, and always the most unprofitable part of it.

It is not because wealth consists more essentially in money than in goods, that the merchant find it generally more easy to buy goods with money, than to buy money with goods；but because money is the known and established instrument of commerce, for which everything is readily given in exchange, but which is not always with equal readiness to be got in exchange for everything. The greater part of goods besides are more perishable than money, and he may frequently sustain a much greater loss by keeping them.When his goods are upon hand too, he is more liable to such demands for money as he may not be able to answer, than when he has got their price in his coffers.Over and above all this, his profit arises more directly from selling than from buying, and he is upon all these accounts generally much more anxious to exchange his goods for money, than his money for goods.But though a particular merchant, with abundance of goods in his warehouse, may sometimes be ruined by not being able to sell them in time, a nation or country is not liable to the same accident.The whole capital of a merchant frequently consists in perish, able goods destined for purchasing money.But it is but a very small part of the annual produce of the land and labour of a country which can ever be destined for purchasing gold and silver from their neighbours.The far greater part is circulated and consumed among themselves；and even of the surplus which is sent abroad, the greater part is generally destined for the purchase of other foreign goods.Though gold and silver, therefore, could not be had in exchange for the goods destined to purchase them, the nation would not be ruined.It might, indeed, suffer some loss and inconveniency, and be forced upon some of those expedients which are necessary for supplying the place of money.The annual produce of its land and labour, however, would be the same, or very nearly the same, as usual, because the same, or very nearly the same consumable capital would be employed in maintaining it.And though goods do not always draw money so readily as money draws goods, in the long-run they draw it more necessarily than even it draws them.Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.Money, therefore, necessarily runs after goods, but goods do not always or necessarily run after money.The man who buys, does not always mean to sell again, but frequently to use or to consume；whereas he who sells, always means to buy again.The one may frequently have done the whole, but the other can never have done more than the one-half of his business.It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.

Consumable commodities, it is said, are soon destroyed；whereas gold and silver are of a more durable nature, and, were it not for this continual exportation, might be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the real wealth of the country. Nothing, therefore, it is pretended, can be more disadvantageous to any country, than the trade which consists in the exchange of such lasting for such perishable commodities.We do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hard-ware of England for the wines of France；and yet hard-ware is a very durable commodity, and were it not for this continual exportation, might too be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country.But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them；that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there；and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it, a part of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workmen whose business it was to make them.It should as readily occur that the quantity of gold and silver is in every country limited by the use which there is for those metals；that their use consists in circulating commodities as coin, and in affording a species of household furniture as plate；that the quantity of coin in every country is regulated by the value of the commodities which are to be circulated by it：increase that value, and immediately a part of it will be sent abroad to purchase, wherever it is to be had, the additional quantity of coin requisite for circulating them：that the quantity of plate is regulated by the number and wealth of those private families who choose to indulge themselves in that sort of magnificence：increase the number and wealth of such families, and a part of this increased wealth will most probably be employed in purchasing, wherever it is to be found, an additional quantity of plate：that to attempt to increase the wealth of any country, either by introducing or by detaining in it an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver, is as absurd as it would be to attempt to increase the good cheer of private families, by obliging them to keep an unnecessary number of kitchen utensils.As the expense of purchasing those unnecessary utensils would diminish instead of increasing either the quantity of goodness of the family provisions；so the expense of purchasing an unnecessary quantity of gold and silver must, in every country, as necessarily diminish the wealth which feeds, clothes, and lodges, which maintains and employs the people.Gold and silver, whether in the shape of coin or of plate, are utensils, it must be remembered, as much as the furniture of the kitchen.Increase the use for them, increase the consumable commodities which are to be circulated, managed, and prepared by means of them, and you will infallibly increase the quantity；but if you attempt, by extraordinary means, to increase the quantity, you will as infallibly diminish the use and even the quantity too, which in those metals can never be greater than what the use requires.Were they ever to be accumulated beyond this quantity, their transportation is so easy, and the loss which attends their lying idle and unemployed so great, that no law could prevent their being immediately sent out of the country.

It is not always necessary to accumulate gold and silver, in order to enable a country to carry on foreign wars, and to maintain fleets and armies in distant countries. Fleets and armies are maintained, not with gold and silver, but with consumable goods.The nation which, from the annual produce of its domestic industry, from the annual revenue arising out of its lands, labour, and consumable stock, has wherewithal to purchase those consumable goods in distant countries, can maintain foreign wars there.

A nation may purchase the pay and provisions of an army in a distant country three different ways；by sending abroad either, first, some part of its accumulated gold and silver；or secondly, some part of the annual produce of its manufactures；or last of all, some part of its annual rude produce.

The gold and silver which can properly be considered as accumulated or stored up in any country, may be distinguished into three parts；first, the circulating money；secondly, the plate of private families；and last of all, the money which may have been collected by many years'parsimony, and laid up in the treasury of the prince.

It can seldom happen that much can be spared from the circulating money of the country；because in that there can seldom be much redundancy. The value of goods annually bought and sold in any country requires a certain quantity of money to circulate and distribute them to their proper consumers, and can give employment to no more.The channel of circulation necessarily draws to itself a sum sufficient to fill it, and never admits any more.Something, however, is generally withdrawn from this channel in the case of foreign war.By the great number of people who are maintained abroad, fewer are maintained at home.Fewer goods are circulated there, and less money becomes necessary to circulate them.An extraordinary quantity of paper money, of some sort or other too, such as exchequer notes, navy bills, and bank bills in England, is generally issued upon such occasions, and by supplying the place of circulating gold and silver, gives an opportunity of sending a greater quantity of it abroad.All this, however, could afford but a poor resource for maintaining a foreign war, of great expense and several years duration.

The melting down the plate of private families, has upon every occasion been found a still more insignificant one. The French, in the beginning of the last war, did not derive so much advantage from this expedient as to compensate the loss of the fashion.

The accumulated treasures of the prince have, in former times, afforded a much greater and more lasting resource. In the present times, if you except the king of Prussia, to accumulate treasure seems to be no part of the policy of European princes.

The funds which maintained the foreign wars of the present century, the most expensive perhaps which history records, seem to have had little dependency upon the exportation either of the circulating money, or of the plate of private families, or of the treasure of the prince. The last French war cost Great Britain upwards of ninety millions, including not only the seventy-five millions of new debt that was contracted, but the additional two shillings in the pound land tax, and what was annually borrowed of the sinking fund.More than two-thirds of this expense were laid out in distant countries；in Germany, Portugal, America, in the ports of the Mediterranean, in the East and West Indies.The kings of England had no accumulated treasure.We never heard of any extraordinary quantity of plate being melted down.The circulating gold and silver of the country had not been supposed to exceed eighteen millions.Since the late recoinage of the gold, however, it is believed to have been a good deal under-rated.Let us suppose, therefore, according to the most exaggerated computation which I remember to have either seen or heard of, that, gold and silver together, it amounted to thirty millions.Had the war been carried on, by means of our money, the whole of it must, even according to this computation, have been sent out and returned again at least twice, in a period of between six and seven years.Should this be supposed, it would afford the most decisive argument to demonstrate how unnecessary it is for government to watch over the preservation of money, since upon this supposition the whole money of the country must have gone from it and returned to it again, two different times in so short a period, without anybody's knowing anything of the matter.The channel of circulation, however, never appeared more empty than usual during any part of this period.Few people wanted money who had wherewithal to pay for it.The profits of foreign trade, indeed, were greater than usual during the whole war；but especially towards the end of it.This occasioned, what it always occasions, a general overtrading in all the parts of Great Britain；and this again occasioned the usual complaint of the scarcity of money, which always follows over-trading.Many people wanted it, who had neither wherewithal to buy it, nor credit to borrow it；and because the debtors found it difficult to borrow, the creditors found it difficult to get payment.Gold and silver, however, were generally to be had for their value, by those who had that value to give for them.

The enormous expense of the late war, therefore, must have been chiefly defrayed, not by the exportation of gold and silver, but by that of British commodities of some kind or other. When the government, or those who acted under them, contracted with a merchant for a remittance to some foreign country, he would naturally endeavour to pay his foreign correspondent, upon whom he had granted a bill, by sending abroad rather commodities than gold and silver.If the commodities of Great Britain were not in demand in that country, he would endeavour to send them to some other country, in which he could purchase a bill upon that country.The transportation of commodities, when properly suited to the market, is always attended with a considerable profit；whereas that of gold and silver is scarce ever attended with any.When those metals are sent abroad in order to purchase foreign commodities, the merchant's profit arises, not from the purchase, but from the sale of the returns.But when they are sent abroad merely to pay a debt, he gets no returns, and consequently no profit.He naturally, therefore, exerts his invention to find out a way of paying his foreign debts, rather by the exportation of commodities than by that of gold and silver.The great quantity of British goods exported during the course of the late war, without bringing back any returns, is accordingly remarked by the author of The Present State of the Nation.

Besides the three sorts of gold and silver above mentioned, there is in all great commercial countries a good deal of bullion alternately imported and exported for the purposes of foreign trade. This bullion, as it circulates among different commercial countries in the same manner as the national coin circulates in every particular country, may be considered as the money of the great mercantile republic.The national coin receives its movement and direction from the commodities circulated within the precincts of each particular country：the money of the mercantile republic, from those circulated between different countries.Both are employed in facilitating exchanges, the one between different individuals of the same, the other between those of different nations.Part of this money of the great mercantile republic may have been, and probably was, employed in carrying on the late war.In time of a general war, it is natural to suppose that a movement and direction should be impressed upon it, different from what it usually follows in profound peace；that it should circulate more about the seat of the war, and be more employed in purchasing there, and in the neighbouring countries, the pay and provisions of the different armies.But whatever part of this money of the mercantile republic, Great Britain may have annually employed in this manner, it must have been annually purchased, either with British commodities, or with something else that had been purchased with them；which still brings us back to commodities, to the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, as the ultimate resources which enabled us to carry on the war.It is natural indeed to suppose, that so great an annual expense must have been defrayed from a great annual produce.The expense of 1761，for example, amounted to more than nineteen millions.No accumulation could have supported so great an annual profusion.There is no annual produce even of gold and silver which could have supported it.The whole gold and silver annually imported into both Spain and Portugal, according to the best accounts, does not commonly much exceed six millions sterling, which, in some years, would scarce have paid four month's expense of the late war.

The commodities most proper for being transported to distant countries, in order to purchase there, either the pay and provisions of an army, or some part of the money of the mercantile republic to be employed in purchasing them, seem to be the finer and more improved manufactures；such as contain a great value in a small bulk, and can, therefore, be exported to a great distance at little expense. A country whose industry produces a great annual surplus of such manufactures, which are usually exported to foreign countries, may carry on for many years a very expensive foreign war, without either exporting any considerable quantity of gold and silver, or even having any such quantity to export.A considerable part of the annual surplus of its manufactures must, indeed, in this case be exported, without bringing back any returns to the country, though it does to the merchant；the government purchasing of the merchant his bills upon foreign countries, in order to purchase there the pay and provisions of an army.Some part of this surplus, however, may still continue to bring back a return.The manufacturers, during the war, will have a double demand upon them, and be called upon, first, to work up goods to be sent abroad, for paying the bills drawn upon foreign countries for the pay and provisions of the army；and, secondly, to work up such as are necessary for purchasing the common returns that had usually been consumed in the country.In the midst of the most destructive foreign war, therefore, the greater part of manufactures may frequently flourish greatly；and, on the contrary, they may decline on the return of the peace.They may flourish amidst the ruin of their country, and begin to decay upon the return of its prosperity.The different state of many different branches of the British manufactures during the late war, and for some time after the peace, may serve as an illustration of what has been just now said.

No foreign war of great expense or duration could conveniently be carried on by the exportation of the rude produce of the soil. The expense of sending such a quantity of it to a foreign country as might purchase the pay and provisions of an army, would be too great.Few countries too produce much more rude produce than what is sufficient for the subsistence of their own inhabitants.To send abroad any great quantity of it, therefore, would be to send abroad a part of the necessary subsistence of the people.It is otherwise with the exportation of manufactures.The maintenance of the people employed in them is kept at home, and only the surplus part of their work is exported.Mr.Hume frequently takes notice of the inability of the ancient kings of England to carry on, without interruption, any foreign war of long duration.The English, in those days, had nothing wherewithal to purchase the pay and provisions of their armies in foreign countries, but either the rude produce of the soil, of which no considerable part could be spared from the home consumption, or a few manufactures of the coarsest kind, of which, as well as of the rude produce, the transportation was too expensive.This inability did not arise from the want of money, but of the finer and more improved manufactures.Buying and selling was transacted by means of money in England then, as well as now.The quantity of circulating money must have borne the same proportion to the number and value of purchases and sales usually transacted at that time, which it does to those transacted at present；or rather it must have borne a greater proportion, because there was then no paper, which now occupies a great part of the employment of gold and silver.Among nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known, the sovereign, upon extraordinary occasions, can seldom draw any considerable aid from his subjects, for reasons which shall be explained hereafter.It is in such countries, therefore, that he generally endeavours to accumulate a treasure, as the only resource against such emergencies.Independent of this necessity, he is in such a situation naturally disposed to the parsimony requisite for accumulation.In that simple state, the expense even of a sovereign is not directed by the vanity which delights in the gaudy finery of a court, but is employed in bounty to his tenants, and hospitality to his retainers.But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance；though vanity almost always does.Every Tartar chief, accordingly, has a treasure.The treasures of Mazepa, chief of the Cossacs in the Ukraine, the famous ally of Charles the XⅡth, are said to have been very great.The French kings of the Merovingian race all had treasures.When they divided their kingdom among their different children, they divided their treasure too.The Saxon princes, and the first kings after the conquest, seem likewise to have accumulated treasures.The first exploit of every new reign was commonly to seize the treasure of the preceding king, as the most essential measure for securing the succession.The sovereigns of improved and commercial countries are not under the same necessity of accumulating treasures, because they can generally draw from their subjects extraordinary aids upon extraordinary occasions.They are likewise less disposed to do so.They naturally, perhaps necessarily, follow the mode of the times, and their expense comes to be regulated by the same extravagant vanity which directs that of all the other great proprietors in their dominions.The insignificant pageantry of their court becomes every day more brilliant, and the expense of it not only prevents accumulation, but frequently, encroaches upon the funds destined for more necessary expenses.What Dercyllidas said of the court of Persia, may be applied to that of several European princes, that he saw there much splendour but little strength, and many servants but few soldiers.

外贸并不仅是为了进口金银，而且国家还能从中得到其他益处：一是外贸能运出本国的剩余产物，使之发挥价值，从而扩大市场，促进本国生产的发展；二是能换回本国有需求的产品。外贸通过这两项功能为国民造福，而获得金银只是微不足道的附带利益。

美洲的发现使欧洲繁荣，但这种繁荣并不是单靠金银装点的。金银的丰富使其更便宜了，而购买者也大大增加了，这是对欧洲的实际便利。但是反过来看，这也造成了不便，购买商品需要更多的金银，因此金银的交换价格下降了。不过这不是问题的关键，美洲的发现对于欧洲的真正意义在于它给欧洲提供了新的广阔市场，促进了欧洲劳动生产力的提高。这种好处本应是相互的，但由于欧洲人的暴行，美洲为实现欧洲的利益而牺牲了自己的利益。

在通往东印度的航线被开辟后，欧洲本应能开拓更大的市场，因为东方诸国更为富庶发达，但是，结果并不如人所愿。欧洲列强在东方采取的垄断贸易只使少部分专营公司获利，并且经营东方贸易要从欧洲出口大量白银，而某些人将白银出口视为不利。但根据前面的分析可知，白银出口并非洪水猛兽，也有些进行再出口贸易的欧洲国家获得了白银。然而，东方贸易因为受到诸多阻碍，其优势并未显现。

一国的财富并不单由金银构成，还包括土地、房屋和各种消费品，但是重商主义者将金银视为财富的唯一源泉。为了增加国家的金银，就必须保持贸易顺差，为此，需要减少进口并增加出口。减少进口有两条途径：一是限制本国能够生产的消费品的进口；二是限制其贸易对本国不利的国家的商品的进口。鼓励出口有四条途径：一是退税，二是奖励，三是订立有利的贸易条约，四是建立殖民地，下文将分别论述。he importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade. Between Twhatever places foreign trade is carried on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits from it.It carries out that surplus part of the produce of their land and labour for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return for it something else for which there is a demand.It gives a value to their superfluities, by exchanging them for something else, which may satisfy a part of their wants, and increase their enjoyments.By means of it, the narrowness of the home market does not hinder the division of labour in any particular branch of art or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection.By opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive powers, and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the society.These great and important services foreign trade is continually occupied in performing to all the different countries between which it is carried on.They all derive great benefit from it, though that in which the merchant resides generally derives the greatest, as he is generally more employed in supplying the wants, and carrying out the superfluities of his own, than of any other particular country.To import the gold and silver which may be wanted, into the countries which have no mines, is, no doubt, a part of the business of foreign commerce.It is, however, a most insignificant part of it.A country which carried on foreign trade merely upon this account, could scarce have occasion to freight a ship in a century.

It is not by the importation of gold and silver that the discovery of America has enriched Europe. By the abundance of the American mines, those metals have become cheaper.A service of plate can now be purchased for about a third part of the corn, or a third part of the labour, which it would have cost in the fifteenth century.With the same annual expense of labour and commodities, Europe can annually purchase about three times the quantity of plate which it could have purchased at that time.But when a commodity comes to be sold for a third part of what had been its usual price, not only those who purchased it before can purchase three times their former quantity, but it is brought down to the level of a much greater number of purchasers, perhaps to more than ten, perhaps to more than twenty times the former number.So that there may be in Europe at present not only more than three times, but more than twenty or thirty times the quantity of plate which would have been in it, even in its present state of improvement, had the discovery of the American mines never been made.So far Europe has, no doubt, gained a real conveniency, though surely a very trifling one.The cheapness of gold and silver renders those metals rather less fit for the purposes of money than they were before.In order to make the same purchases, we must load ourselves with a greater quantity of them, and carry about a shilling in our pocket where a groat would have done before.It is difficult to say which is most trifling, this inconveniency, or the opposite conveniency.Neither the one nor the other could have made any very essential change in the state of Europe.The discovery of America, however, certainly made a most essential one.By opening a new and inexhaustible market to all the commodities of Europe, it gave occasion to new divisions of labour and improvements of art, which, in the narrow circle of the ancient commerce, could never have taken place for want of a market to take off the greater part of their produce.The productive powers of labour were improved, and its produce increased in all the different countries of Europe, and together with it the real revenue and wealth of the inhabitants.The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe.A new set of exchanges, therefore, began to take place which had never been thought of before, and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent.The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.

The discovery of a passage to the East Indies, by the Cape of Good Hope, which happened much about the same time, opened, perhaps, a still more extensive range to foreign commerce than even that of America, notwithstanding the greater distance. There were but two nations in America, in any respect superior to savages, and these were destroyed almost as soon as discovered.The rest were mere savages.But the empires of China, Indostan, Japan, as well as several others in the East Indies, without having richer mines of gold or silver, were in every other respect much richer, better cultivated, and more advanced in all arts and manufactures than either Mexico or Peru, even though we should credit, what plainly deserves no credit, the exaggerated accounts of the Spanish writers, concerning the ancient state of those empires.But rich and civilised nations can always exchange to a much greater value with one another, than with savages and barbarians.Europe, however, has hitherto derived much less advantage from its commerce with the East Indies, than from that with America.The Portuguese monopolized the East India trade to themselves for about a century, and it was only indirectly and through them, that the other nations of Europe could either send out or receive any goods from that country.When the Dutch, in the beginning of the last century, began to encroach upon them, they vested their whole East India commerce in an exclusive company.The English, French, Swedes, and Danes, have all followed their example, so that no great nation in Europe has ever yet had the benefit of a free commerce to the East Indies.No other reason need be assigned why it has never been so advantageous as the trade to America, which, between almost every nation of Europe and its own colonies, is free to all its subjects.The exclusive privileges of those East India companies, their great riches, the great favour and protection which these have procured them from their respective governments, have excited much envy against them.This envy has frequently represented their trade as altogether pernicious, on account of the great quantities of silver, which it every year exports from the countries from which it is carried on.The parties concerned have replied, that their trade, by this continual exportation of silver, might, indeed, tend to impoverish Europe in general, but not the particular country from which it was carried on；because, by the exportation of a part of the returns to other European countries, it annually brought home a much greater quantity of that metal than it carried out.Both the objection and the reply are founded in the popular notion which I have been just now examining.It is, therefore, unnecessary to say any thing further about either.By the annual exportation of silver to the East Indies, plate is probably somewhat dearer in Europe than it otherwise might have been；and coined silver probably purchases a larger quantity both of labour and commodities.The former of these two effects is a very small loss, the latter a very small advantage；both too insignificant to deserve any part of the public attention.The trade to the East Indies, by opening a market to the commodities of Europe, or, what comes nearly to the same thing, to the gold and silver which is purchased with those commodities, must necessarily tend to increase the annual production of European commodities, and consequently the real wealth and revenue of Europe.That it has hitherto increased them so little, is probably owing to the restraints which it every-where labours under.

I thought it necessary, though at the hazard of being tedious, to examine at full length this popular notion that wealth consists in money, or in gold and silver. Money in common language, as I have already observed, frequently signifies wealth；and this ambiguity of expression has rendered this popular notion so familiar to us, that even they, who are convinced of its absurdity, are very apt to forget their own principles, and in the course of their reasonings to take it for granted as a certain and undeniable truth.Some of the best English writers upon commerce set out with observing, that the wealth of a country consists, not in its gold and silver only, but in its lands, houses, and consumable goods of all different kinds.In the course of their reasonings, however, the lands, houses, and consumable goods seem to slip out of their memory, and the strain of their argument frequently supposes that all wealth consists in gold and silver, and that to multiply those metals is the great object of national industry and commerce.

The two principles being established, however, that wealth consisted in gold and silver, and that those metals could be brought into a country which had no mines only by the balance of trade, or by exporting to a greater value than it imported；it necessarily became the great object of political economy to diminish as much as possible the importation of foreign goods for home consumption, and to increase as much as possible the exportation of the produce of domestic industry. Its two great engines for enriching the country, therefore, were restraints upon importation, and encouragements to exportation.

The restraints upon importation were of two kinds.

First, restraints upon the importation of such foreign goods for home consumption as could be produced at home, from whatever country they were imported.

Secondly, restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds from those particular countries with which the balance of trade was supposed to be disadvantageous.

Those different restraints consisted sometimes in high duties, and sometimes in absolute prohibitions.

Exportation was encouraged sometimes by drawbacks, sometimes by bounties, sometimes by advantageous treaties of commerce with foreign states, and sometimes by the establishment of colonies in distant countries.

Drawbacks were given upon two different occasions. When the home-manufactures were subject to any duty or excise, either the whole or a part of it was frequently drawn back upon their exportation；and when foreign goods liable to a duty were imported in order to be exported again, either the whole or a part of this duty was sometimes given back upon such exportation.

Bounties were given for the encouragement either of some beginning manufactures, or of such sorts of industry of other kinds as were supposed to deserve particular favour.

By the treaties of commerce, particular privileges were procured in some foreign state for the goods and merchants of the country, beyond what were granted to those other countries.

By the establishment of colonies in distant countries, not only particular privileges, but a monopoly was frequently procured for the goods and merchants of the country which established them.

The two sorts of restraints upon importation above-mentioned, together with these four encouragements to exportation, constitute the six principal means by which the commercial system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and silver in any country by turning the balance of trade in its favour. I shall consider each of them in a particular chapter, and without taking much further notice of their supposed tendency to bring money into the country, I shall examine chiefly what are likely to be the effects of each of them upon the annual produce of its industry.According as they tend either to increase or diminish the value of this annual produce, they must evidently tend either to increase or diminish the real wealth and revenue of the country.第二章　论限制从国外进口国内能生产的商品　Chapter Ⅱ　Of Restraints upon the Importation from Foreign Countries of Such Goods as Can be Produced at Home导读

通过高关税或绝对禁止的方法来限制本国能生产的商品的进口，能够使国内的这类产业形成垄断，并且鼓励该产业的发展，但这种垄断能否促进社会总产业的发展是值得商榷的。

社会总产业的发展必须与社会资本所能维持的限度相一致，但是任何商业条例都不能使社会产业的发展超过其资本的限度，它所做的只是调整了产业的方向，而这种调整并不一定是有利的。

每个追逐自身的利益的人都需要为其资本找到最佳用途，而这种自利也能给社会带来利益。首先，人们总是倾向于就近投资。这样一来，商人总是倾向于优先经营国内贸易，然后是对外消费品贸易，最后才是运输贸易。如此，资本就可以尽可能地保持在国内，并通过国内贸易鼓励国内产业的发展。其次，人们总是倾向于使自己的产品具有最大的价值，而社会年收入与全部年产品的交换价值相等，如果人们尽力提高产品价值，这种倾向便会促进社会总收入的提升和社会的丰饶。

因此，人们由自利而驱动的行为能够在“无形的手”的引领下走向对社会有利的方向。而如果政治家加以干涉，却往往适得其反。人为造成国内产品的垄断便是这种干涉之一，这种干涉是有害的，因为按常理说，如果购买一件物品要比自己制造更划算，那么人们就不会自己制造。人们应该把精力集中在自己的优势方面，以自己的劳动产品换取其他人的产品，对于国家来说也是如此。但限制进口造成的垄断却使资本流向了一国不占优势的产业，这就意味着资本退出了更占优势的产业。尽管某些产业有可能受到支持而发展起来，但是限制的结果是阻碍了资本朝有利方向流动，从而对总体不利。而对于某些外国占有巨大优势的产业，费尽心机地与之竞争只能消耗更多的有效资本，无疑是得不偿失的。只有彼此都发挥优势，进行交换，才能实现双赢。

y restraining, either by high duties, or by absolute prohibitions, the

importation of such goods from foreign countries as can be B

produced at home, the monopoly of the home market is more or less secured to the domestic industry employed in producing them. Thus the prohibition of importing either live cattle or salt provisions from foreign countries secures to the graziers of Great Britain the monopoly of the home market for butcher's meat.The high duties upon the importation of corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, give a like advantage to the growers of that commodity.The prohibition of the importation of foreign woollens is equally favourable to the woollen manufacturers.The silk manufacture, though altogether employed upon foreign materials, has lately obtained the same advantage.The linen manufacture has not yet obtained it, but is making great strides towards it.Many other sorts of manufacturers have, in the same manner, obtained in Great Britain, either altogether, or very nearly a monopoly against their countrymen.The variety of goods of which the importation into Great Britain is prohibited, either absolutely, or under certain circumstances, greatly exceeds what can easily be suspected by those who are not well acquainted with the laws of the customs.

That this monopoly of the home-market frequently gives great encouragement to that particular species of industry which enjoys it, and frequently turns towards that employment a greater share of both the labour and stock of the society than would otherwise have gone to it, cannot be doubted. But whether it tends either to increase the general industry of the society, or to give it the most advantageous direction, is not, perhaps, altogether so evident.

The general industry of the society never can exceed what the capital of the society can employ. As the number of workmen that can be kept in employment by any particular person must bear a certain proportion to his capital, so the number of those that can be continually employed by all the members of a great society, must bear a certain proportion to the whole capital of that society, and never can exceed that proportion.No regulation of commerce can increase the quantity of industry in any society beyond what its capital can maintain.It can only divert a part of it into a direction into which it might not otherwise have gone；and it is by no means certain that this artificial direction is likely to be more advantageous to the society than that into which it would have gone of its own accord.

Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view.But the study of his own advantage naturally, or rather necessarily leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society.

First, every individual endeavours to employ his capital as near home as he can, and consequently as much as he can in the support of domestic industry；provided always that he can thereby obtain the ordinary, or not a great deal less than the ordinary profits of stock.

Thus, upon equal or nearly equal profits, every wholesale merchant naturally prefers the home-trade to the foreign trade of consumption, and the foreign trade of consumption to the carrying trade. In the home-trade his capital is never so long out of his sight as it frequently is in the foreign trade of consumption.He can know better the character and situation of the persons whom he trusts, and if he should happen to be deceived, he knows better the laws of the country from which he must seek redress.In the carrying trade, the capital of the merchant is, as it were, divided between two foreign countries, and no part of it is ever necessarily brought home, or placed under his own immediate view and command.The capital which an Amsterdam merchant employs in carrying corn from Konigsberg to Lisbon, and fruit and wine from Lisbon to Konigsberg, must generally be the one-half of it at Konigsberg and the other half at Lisbon.No part of it need ever come to Amsterdam.The natural residence of such a merchant should either be at Konigsberg or Lisbon, and it can only be some very particular circumstances which can make him prefer the residence of Amsterdam.The uneasiness, however, which he feels at being separated so far from his capital, generally determines him to bring part both of the Konigsberg goods which he destines for the market of Lisbon, and of the Lisbon goods which he destines for that of Konigsberg, to Amsterdam：and though this necessarily subjects him to a double charge of loading and unloading, as well as to the payment of some duties and customs, yet for the sake of having some part of his capital always under his own view and command, he willingly submits to this extraordinary charge；and it is in this manner that every country which has any considerable share of the carrying trade, becomes always the emporium, or general market, for the goods of all the different countries whose trade it carries on.The merchant, in order to save a second loading and unloading, endeavours always to sell in the home-market as much of the goods of all those different countries as he can, and thus, so far as he can, to convert his carrying trade into a foreign trade of consumption.A merchant, in the same manner, who is engaged in the foreign trade of consumption, when he collects goods for foreign markets, will always be glad, upon equal or nearly equal profits, to sell as great a part of them at home as he can.He saves himself the risk and trouble of exportation, when, so far as he can, he thus converts his foreign trade of consumption into a home-trade.Home is in this manner the centre, if I may say so, round which the capitals of the inhabitants of every country are continually circulating, and towards which they are always tending, though by particular causes they may sometimes be driven off and repelled from it towards more distant employments.But a capital employed in the home-trade, it has already been shown, necessarily puts into motion a greater quantity of domestic industry, and gives revenue and employment to a greater number of the inhabitants of the country, than an equal capital employed in the foreign trade of consumption：and one employed in the foreign trade of consumption has the same advantage over an equal capital employed in the carrying trade.Upon equal, or only nearly equal profits, therefore, every individual naturally inclines to employ his capital in the manner in which it is likely to afford the greatest support to domestic industry, and to give revenue and employment to the greatest number of people of his own country.

Secondly, every individual who employs his capital in the support of domestic industry, necessarily endeavours so to direct that industry, that its produce may be of the greatest possible value.

The produce of industry is what it adds to the subject or materials upon which it is employed. In proportion as the value of this produce is great or small, so will likewise be the profits of the employer.But it is only for the sake of profit that any man employs a capital in the support of industry；and he will always, therefore, endeavour to employ it in the support of that industry of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, or to exchange for the greatest quantity either of money or of other goods.

But the annual revenue of every society is always precisely equal to the exchangeable value of the whole annual produce of its industry, or rather is precisely the same thing with that exchangeable value. As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value；every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can.He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it.By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security；and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it.By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.

What is the species of domestic industry which his capital can employ, and of which the produce is likely to be of the greatest value, every individual, it is evident, can, in his local situation, judge much better than any statesman or lawgiver can do for him. The statesman, who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

To give the monopoly of the home-market to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be brought there as cheap as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless.If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful.It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy.The taylor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker.The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor.The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers.All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for.

What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed in a way in which we have some advantage.The general industry of the country, being always in proportion to the capital which employs it, will not thereby be diminished, no more than that of the above-mentioned artificers；but only left to find out the way in which it can be employed with the greatest advantage.It is certainly not employed to the greatest advantage, when it is thus directed towards an object which it can buy cheaper than it can make.The value of its annual produce is certainly more or less diminished, when it is thus turned away from producing commodities evidently of more value than the commodity which it is directed to produce.According to the supposition, that commodity could be purchased from foreign countries cheaper than it can be made at home.It could, therefore, have been purchased with a part only of the commodities, or, what is the same thing, with a part only of the price of the commodities, which the industry employed by an equal capital would have produced at home, had it been left to follow its natural course.The industry of the country, therefore, is thus turned away from a more, to a less advantageous employment, and the exchangeable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased, according to the intention of the lawgiver, must necessarily be diminished by every such regulation.

By means of such regulations, indeed, a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap or cheaper than in the foreign country. But though the industry of the society may be thus carried with advantage into a particular channel sooner than it could have been otherwise, it will by no means follow that the sum total, either of its industry, or of its revenue, can ever be augmented by any such regulation.The industry of the society can augment only in proportion as its capital augments, and its capital can augment only in proportion to what can be gradually saved out of its revenue.But the immediate effect of every such regulation is to diminish its revenue, and what diminishes its revenue is certainly not very likely to augment its capital faster than it would have augmented of its own accord, had both capital and industry been left to find out their natural employments.

Though for want of such regulations the society should never acquire the proposed manufacture, it would not, upon that account, necessarily be the poorer in any one period of its duration. In every period of its duration its whole capital and industry might still have been employed, though upon different objects, in the manner that was most advantageous at the time.In every period its revenue might have been the greatest which its capital could afford, and both capital and revenue might have been augmented with the greatest possible rapidity.

The natural advantages which one country has over another in producing particular commodities are sometimes so great, that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them. By means of glasses, hotbeds, and hot walls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries.Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland？But if there would be a manifest absurdity in turning towards any employment, thirty times more of the capital and industry of the country, than would be necessary to purchase from foreign countries an equal quantity of the commodities wanted, there must be an absurdity, though not altogether so glaring, yet exactly of the same kind, in turning towards any such employment a thirtieth, or even a three hundredth part more of either.Whether the advantages which one country has over another, be natural or acquired, is in this respect of no consequence.As long as the one country has those advantages, and the other wants them, it will always be more advantageous for the latter, rather to buy of the former than to make.It is an acquired advantage only, which one artificer has over his neighbour, who exercises another trade；and yet they both find it more advantageous to buy of one another, than to make what does not belong to their particular trades.

垄断对于工商业者来说是有利可图的。因为相比起土地天然产物，制成品更容易在国际间流动，自由贸易可能会打击甚至毁灭某些制造业，但是对于土地天然产物来说，自由贸易没有影响。

例如，即使能够自由进口牲畜，进口量也是有限的，因为运输成本巨大。对于改良完善的地区，进口牲畜反而更为有利；未开垦的地区，则会因为出口牲畜，导致牲畜价格抬高，从而阻碍土地改良。

自由进口腌肉也不会对畜牧业造成打击，因为进口腌肉不仅需要运输成本，而且进口腌肉的口感无法与鲜肉相比，所以不会影响本国的畜牧业。

自由进口谷物也不会造成什么影响。运输成本使得外国谷物在英格兰的市场中并不占优势。谷物奖金鼓励了丰年谷物的出口，使之不能补偿歉收之年，反而增加了歉收之年的谷物进口，但是受损失的是谷物商人，乡绅和农民并不受影响。乡绅和农民原本是没有垄断精神的，但城市中垄断风气的盛行使得乡绅们也纷纷仿效，从而要求谷物和牲畜的垄断权，尽管这是没有必要的。erchants and manufacturers are the people who derive the greatest advantage from this monopoly of the home-market. The Mprohibition of the importation of foreign cattle, and of salt provisions, together with the high duties upon foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, are not near so advantageous to the graziers and farmers of Great Britain, as other regulations of the same kind are to its merchants and manufacturers.Manufactures, those of the finer kind especially, are more easily transported from one country to another than corn or cattle.It is in the fetching and carrying manufactures, accordingly, that foreign trade is chiefly employed.In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market.It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil.If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment.But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.

If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so few could be imported, that the grazing trade of Great Britain could be little affected by it. Live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which the transportation is more expensive by sea than by land.By land they carry themselves to market.By sea, not only the cattle, but their food and their water too, must be carried at no small expense and inconveniency.The short sea between Ireland and Great Britain, indeed, renders the importation of Irish cattle more easy.But though the free importation of them, which was lately permitted only for a limited time, were rendered perpetual, it could have no considerable effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain.Those parts of Great Britain which border upon the Irish Sea are all grazing countries.Irish cattle could never be imported for their use, but must be drove through those very extensive countries, at no small expense and inconveniency, before they could arrive at their proper market.Fat cattle could not be drove so far.Lean cattle, therefore, only could be imported, and such importation could interfere, not with the interest of the feeding or fattening countries, to which, by reducing the price of lean cattle, it would rather be advantageous, but with that of the breeding countries only.The small number of Irish cattle imported since their importation was permitted, together with the good price at which lean cattle still continue to sell, seem to demonstrate that even the breeding countries of Great Britain are never likely to be much affected by the free importation of Irish cattle.The common people of Ireland, indeed, are said to have sometimes opposed with violence the exportation of their cattle.But if the exporters had found any great advantage in continuing the trade, they could easily, when the law was on their side, have conquered this mobbish opposition.

Feeding and fattening countries, besides, must always be highly improved, whereas breeding countries are generally uncultivated. The high price of lean cattle, by augmenting the value of uncultivated land, is like a bounty against improvement.To any country which was highly improved throughout, it would be more advantageous to import its lean cattle than to breed them.The province of Holland, accordingly, is said to follow this maxim at present.The mountains of Scotland, Wales and Northumberland, indeed, are countries not capable of much improvement, and seem destined by nature to be the breeding countries of Great Britain.The freest importation of foreign cattle could have no other effect than to hinder those breeding countries from taking advantage of the increasing population and improvement of the rest of the kingdom, from raising their price to an exorbitant height, and from laying a real tax upon all the more improved and cultivated parts of the country.

The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain as that of live cattle. Salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expense, of higher price.They could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country.They might be used for victualling ships for distant voyages, and such like uses, but could never make any considerable part of the food of the people.The small quantity of salt provisions imported from Ireland since their importation was rendered free, is an experimental proof that our graziers have nothing to apprehend from it.It does not appear that the price of butcher's-meat has ever been sensibly affected by it.

Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher's-meat.A pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher's-meat at fourpence.The small quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the freest importation.The average quantity imported one year with another, amounts only, according to the very well informed author of the tracts upon the corn trade, to twenty-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-eight quarters of all sorts of grain, and does not exceed the five hundred and seventy-one part of the annual consumption.But as the bounty upon corn occasions a greater exportation in years of plenty, so it must of consequence occasion a greater importation in years of scarcity, than in the actual state of tillage would otherwise take place.By means of it, the plenty of one year does not compensate the scarcity of another, and as the average quantity exported is necessarily augmented by it, so must likewise, in the actual state of tillage, the average quantity imported.If there were no bounty, as less corn would be exported, so it is probable that, one year with another, less would be imported than at present.The corn merchants, the fetchers and carriers of corn between Great Britain and foreign countries, would have much less employment, and might suffer considerably；but the country gentlemen and farmers could suffer very little.It is in the corn merchants accordingly, rather than in the country gentlemen and farmers, that I have observed the greatest anxiety for the renewal and continuation of the bounty.

Country gentlemen and farmers are, to their great honour, of all people, the least subject to the wretched spirit of monopoly. The undertaker of a great manufactory is sometimes alarmed if another work of the same kind is established within twenty miles of him.The Dutch undertaker of the woollen manufacture at Abbeville stipulated, that no work of the same kind should be established within thirty leagues of that city.Farmers and country gentlemen, on the contrary, are generally disposed rather to promote than to obstruct the cultivation and improvement of their neighbours farms and estates.They have no secrets, such as those of the greater part of manufacturers, but are generally rather fond of communicating to their neighbours, and of extending as far as possible any new practice which they have found to be advantageous.Pius Questus, says old Cato, stabilissimusque, minimeque invidiosus；minimeque male cogitantes sunt, qui in eo studio occupati sunt.Country gentlemen and farmers, dispersed in different parts of the country, cannot so easily combine as merchants and manufacturers, who being collected into towns, and accustomed to that exclusive corporation spirit which prevails in them, naturally endeavour to obtain against all their countrymen, the same exclusive privilege which they generally possess against the inhabitants of their respective towns.They accordingly seem to have been the original inventors of those restraints upon the importation of foreign goods, which secure to them the monopoly of the home-market.It was probably in imitation of them, and to put themselves upon a level with those who, they found, were disposed to oppress them, that the country gentlemen and farmers of Great Britain so far forgot the generosity which is natural to their station, as to demand the exclusive privilege of supplying their countrymen with corn and butcher's-meat.They did not perhaps take time to consider, how much less their interest could be affected by the freedom of trade, than that of the people whose example they followed.

To prohibit by a perpetual law the importation of foreign corn and cattle, is in reality to enact, that the population and industry of the country shall at no time exceed what the rude produce of its own soil can maintain.

在两种情况下，加重外国产业负担是有必要的。一是针对国防所需的产业，如航海业。大不列颠的《航海法》对外国船只设定了严格的限制，使得本国船只占有了对本国航运生意的垄断权。《航海法》打击了操持运输贸易的荷兰人，但是对国外贸易是不利的，因为外国人无法前来自由购买和销售商品。不过出于国防的考虑，这些牺牲是有必要的。

二是在国内产品也必须课税时，加征外国产品的税收便是合理的。这样两者能在大致相同的情况下进行竞争。有人提出要对一切外国商品征税，以抵消对本国生活必需品的征税。他们认为，因为对本国生活必需品的征税抬高了劳动价格，从而使本国商品的价格上升，所以，对一切外国商品征税才能保持平衡。但是，生活必需品税对各种商品价格上涨的影响是不确定的，并且，生活必需品税已经给人民带来了负担，再加征新税，抬高其他商品的价格，只会雪上加霜，并且，只有最富裕的国家才能应付加征生活必需品税所带来的失调。

另外两种情况也需要考虑。一是如何把握允许外国商品自由进口的程度。在此问题上，有时会面临外国限制本国产品出口的情况，那么复仇心理导致本国对该国的产品也采取严禁的政策，例如，法国便常使用限制进口的方法，但是这种报复能否起到效果是值得怀疑的，甚至会由于限制进口，抬高了国内商品的价格，反而对国民不利。

二是如何把握重开自由进口的程度。因为在禁止进口的保护下，国内某些制造业得以壮大，所以重开自由进口必须谨慎行事，但由于两个原因，即使重开了，也不一定会引起大混乱。一个原因是目前不需奖金鼓励便可出口的商品不会受到冲击，因为它们已具备相当的竞争力，另一个原因是因重开进口而失业的人们能够重新就业。尽管如此，为了保护固定资本投资者的利益，重开进口必须是缓慢而谨慎的。为了增加财政收入而对外国商品征税是后文将要讨论的，但是为了阻止进口而征税则是无益之举。here seem, however, to be two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign, for the Tencouragement of domestic industry.

The first is, when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country. The defence of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping.The act of navigation, therefore, very properly endeavours to give the sailors and shipping of Great Britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country, in some cases, by absolute prohibitions, and in others by heavy burdens upon the shipping of foreign countries.The following are the principal dispositions of this act.

First, all ships, of which the owners, masters, and three-fourths of the mariners are not British subjects, are prohibited, upon pain of forfeiting ship and cargo, from trading to the British settlements and plantations, or from being employed in the coasting trade of Great Britain.

Secondly, a great variety of the most bulky articles of importation can be brought into Great Britain only, either in such ships as are above described, or in ships of the country where those goods are purchased, and of which the owners, masters, and three-fourths of the mariners, are of that particular country；and when imported even in ships of this latter kind, they are subject to double aliens duty. If imported in ships of any other country, the penalty is forfeiture of ship and goods.When this act was made, the Dutch were, what they still are, the great carriers of Europe, and by this regulation they were entirely excluded from being the carriers to Great Britain, or 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, whale-bone, oil, and blubber, not caught by and cured on board British vessels, when imported into Great Britain, are subjected 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 the Second.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 some 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 labourers 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 upon every foreign commodity, equal to this enhancement of the price of the home commodities with which it can come into competition.

Whether taxes upon the necessaries of life, such as those in Great Britain upon soap, salt, leather, candles, etc. necessarily raise the price of labour, and consequently that of all other commodities, I shall consider hereafter, when I come to treat of taxes.Supposing, however, in the mean time, that they have this effect, and they have it undoubtedly, this general enhancement of the price of all commodities, in consequence of that of labour, is a case which differs in the two following respects from that of a particular commodity, of which the price was enhanced by a particular tax immediately imposed upon it.

First, it might always be known with great exactness how far the price of such a commodity could be enhanced by such a tax：but how far the general enhancement of the price of labour might affect that of every different commodity about which labour was employed, could never be known with any tolerable exactness. It would be impossible, therefore, to proportion with any tolerable exactness the tax upon every foreign, to this enhancement of the price of every home commodity.

Secondly, taxes upon the necessaries of life have nearly the same effect upon the circumstances of the people as a poor soil and a bad climate. Provisions are thereby rendered dearer in the same manner as if it required extraordinary labour and expense to raise them.As in the natural scarcity arising from soil and climate, it would be absurd to direct the people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals and industry, so is it likewise in the artificial scarcity arising from such taxes.To be left to accommodate, as well as they could, their industry to their situation, and to find out those employments in which, notwithstanding their unfavourable circumstances, they might have some advantage either in the home or in the foreign market, is what in both cases would evidently be most for their advantage.To lay a new tax upon them, because they are already overburdened with taxes, and because they already pay too dear for the necessaries of life, to make them likewise pay too dear for the greater part of other commodities, is certainly a most absurd way of making amends.

Such taxes, when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens；and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder.As the strongest bodies only can live and enjoy health, under an unwholesome regimen；so the nations only, that in every sort of industry have the greatest natural and acquired advantages, can subsist and prosper under such taxes.Holland is the country in Europe in which they abound most, and which from peculiar circumstances continues to prosper, not by means of them, as has been most absurdly supposed, but in spite of them.

As there are two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestic industry；so there are two others in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation；in the one, how far it is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods；and in the other, how far, or in what manner, it may be proper to restore that free importation after it has been for some time interrupted.

The case in which it may sometimes be a matter of deliberation how far it is proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods, is, when some foreign nation restrains by high duties or prohibitions the importation of some of our manufactures into their country. Revenge in this case naturally dictates retaliation, and that we should impose the like duties and prohibitions upon the importation of some or all of their manufactures into ours.Nations accordingly seldom fail to retaliate in this manner.The French have been particularly forward to favour their own manufactures by restraining the importation of such foreign goods as could come into competition with them.In this consisted a great part of the policy of Mr.Colbert, who, notwithstanding his great abilities, seems in this case to have been imposed upon by the sophistry of merchants and manufacturers, who are always demanding a monopoly against their countrymen.It is at present the opinion of the most intelligent men in France that his operations of this kind have not been beneficial to his country.That minister, by the tariff of 1667，imposed very high duties upon a great number of foreign manufactures.Upon his refusing to moderate them in favour of the Dutch, they in 1671 prohibited the importation of the wines, brandies and manufactures of France.The war of 1672 seems to have been in part occasioned by this commercial dispute.The peace of Nimeguen put an end to it in 1678，by moderating some of those duties in favour of the Dutch, who in consequence took off their prohibition.It was about the same time that the French and English began mutually to oppress each other's industry, by the like duties and prohibitions, of which the French, however, seem to have set the first example.The spirit of hostility which has subsisted between the two nations ever since, has hitherto hindered them from being moderated on either side.In 1697 the English prohibited the importation of bonelace, the manufacture of Flanders.The government of that country, at that time under the dominion of Spain, prohibited in return the importation of English woollens.In 1700，the prohibition of importing bonelace into England, was taken off upon condition that the importance 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'prohibition, 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 hard-ware, 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 a hundred thousand 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 meantime 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 a hundred thousand men, all accustomed to the use of arms, and many of them to rapine and plunder.The number of vagrants was scarce any-where 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 not tend so much to disqualify him from being employed in a new trade, as those of the former from being employed in any.The manufacturer has always been accustomed to look for his subsistence from his labour only：the soldier to expect it from his pay.Application and industry have been familiar to the one；idleness and dissipation to the other.But it is surely much easier to change the direction of industry from one sort of labour to another, than to turn idleness and dissipation to any.To the greater part of manufactures besides, it has already been observed, there are other collateral manufactures of so similar a nature, that a workman can easily transfer his industry from one of them to another.The greater part of such workmen too are occasionally employed in country labour.The stock which employed them in a particular manufacture before, will still remain in the country to employ an equal number of people in some other way.The capital of the country remaining the same, the demand for labour will likewise be the same, or very nearly the same, though it may be exerted in different places and for different occupations.Soldiers and seamen, indeed, when discharged from the king's service, are at liberty to exercise any trade, within any town or place of Great Britain or Ireland.Let the same natural liberty of exercising what species of industry they please, be restored to all his Majesty's subjects, in the same manner as to soldiers and seamen；that is, break down the exclusive privileges of corporations, and repeal the statute of apprenticeship, both which are real encroachments upon natural liberty, and add to these the repeal of the law of settlements, so that a poor workman, when thrown out of employment either in one trade or in one place, may seek for it in another trade or in another place, without the fear either of a prosecution or of a removal, and neither the public nor the individuals will suffer much more from the occasional disbanding some particular classes of manufacturers, than from that of soldiers.Our manufacturers have no doubt great merit with their country, but they cannot have more than those who defend it with their blood, nor deserve to be treated with more delicacy.

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should ever be established in it. Not only the prejudices of the public, but what is much more unconquerable, the private interests of many individuals, irresistibly oppose it.Were the officers of the army to oppose with the same zeal and unanimity any reduction in the numbers of forces, with which master manufacturers set themselves against every law that is likely to increase the number of their rivals in the home market；were the former to animate their soldiers, in the same manner as the latter enflame their workmen, to attack with violence and outrage the proposers of any such regulation；to attempt to reduce the army would be as dangerous as it has now become to attempt to diminish in any respect the monopoly which our manufacturers have obtained against us.This monopoly has so much increased the number of some particular tribes of them, that, like an overgrown standing army, they have become formidable to the government, and upon many occasions intimidate the legislature.The Member of Parliament who supports every proposal for strengthening this monopoly, is sure to acquire not only the reputation of understanding trade, but great popularity and influence with an order of men whose numbers and wealth render them of great importance.If he opposes them, on the contrary, and still more if he has authority enough to be able to thwart them, neither the most acknowledged probity, nor the highest rank, nor the greatest public services, can protect him from the most infamous abuse and detraction, from personal insults, nor sometimes from real danger, arising from the insolent outrage of furious and disappointed monopolists.

The undertaker of a great manufacture, who, by the home markets being suddenly laid open to the competition of foreigners, should be obliged to abandon his trade, would no doubt suffer very considerably. That part of his capital which had usually been employed in purchasing materials and in paying his workmen, might, without much difficulty, perhaps, find another employment.But that part of it which was fixed in workhouses, and in the instruments of trade, could scarce be disposed of without considerable loss.The equitable regard, therefore, to his interest requires that changes of this kind should never be introduced suddenly, but slowly, gradually, and after a very long warning.The legislature, were it possible that its deliberations could be always directed, not by the clamorous importunity of partial interests, but by an extensive view of the general good, ought upon this very account, perhaps, to be particularly careful neither to establish any new monopolies of this kind, nor to extend further those which are already established.Every such regulation introduces some degree of real disorder into the constitution of the state, which it will be difficult afterwards to cure without occasioning another disorder.

How far it may be proper to impose taxes upon the importation of foreign goods, in order, not to prevent their importation, but to raise a revenue for government, I shall consider hereafter when I come to treat of taxes. Taxes imposed with a view to prevent, or even to diminish importation, are evidently as destructive of the revenue of the customs as of the freedom of trade.第三章　论对其贸易差额被认为不利于我国的那些国家的几乎所有商品的进口实施特别限制　Chapter Ⅲ　Of the Extraordinary Restraints upon the Importation of Goods of Almost All Kinds, from Those Countries with which the Balance is Supposed to be Disadvantageous导读

第一节　论即便根据重商主义的原则，这种限制也不合理　PART 1　Of the Unreasonableness of those Restraints even upon the Principles of the Commercial System

重商主义者为了增加本国的金银量，提出要对其贸易差额对我方不利的那些国家的几乎全部商品的进口实施限制，因此，英国便对法国实施了这种限制，使得两国的公平贸易难以开展。但这种做法，即使依据重商主义原则来看，也是没有道理的。

首先，虽然英法间的贸易差额对法国有利，但是对英国来说，两国的贸易仍然是有利可图的，英国可以从对法贸易中获得物美价廉的商品。其次，进口的法国商品可以转口到其他国家以赚取新的利润。荷兰便从这种转口贸易中获益良多。再次，对外贸易差额究竟有利于何国是难以确定的。人们所使用的两个标准，关税账簿和汇率状况，都不能准确地评价。即使汇兑显示对某国有利，也并不意味着贸易差额便对它有利。即使是采用汇兑的一般计算方法，由于各国的通货价值是不相同的，因此不能以各国造币厂的标准来判断，因为铸币费用、银行扣头等使得某些国家的铸币价值要更高一些，在这种情况下，就难以准确表示两国的利弊状况，有时表面汇兑对他国有利，但真实汇兑却对英国有利。o lay extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods of almost all kinds, from those particular countries with which the Tbalance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous, is the second expedient by which the commercial system proposes to increase the quantity of gold and silver. Thus in Great Britain, Silesia lawns may be imported for home consumption upon paying certain duties.But French cambrics and lawns are prohibited to be imported except into the port of London, there to be warehoused for exportation.Higher duties are imposed upon the wines of France than upon those of Portugal, or indeed of any other country.By what is called the impost 1692，a duty of five and twenty per cent.of the rate or value, was laid upon all French goods；while the goods of other nations were, the greater part of them, subjected to much lighter duties, seldom exceeding five per cent.The wine, brandy, salt and vinegar of France were indeed excepted；these commodities being subjected to other heavy duties, either by other laws, or by particular clauses of the same law.In 1696，a second duty of twenty-five per cent.，the first not having been thought a sufficient discouragement, was imposed upon all French goods；except brandy；together with a new duty of five and twenty pounds upon the ton of French wine, and another of fifteen pounds upon the ton of French vinegar.French goods have never been omitted in any of those general subsidies, or duties of five per cent.，which have been imposed upon all, or the greater part of the goods enumerated in the book of rates.If we count the one third and two third subsidies as making a complete subsidy between them, there have been five of these general subsidies；so that before the commencement of the present war seventy-five per cent.may be considered as the lowest duty, to which the greater part of the goods of the growth, produce, or manufacture of France were liable.But upon the greater part of goods, those duties are equivalent to a prohibition.The French in their turn have, I believe, treated our goods and manufactures just as hardly；though I am not so well acquainted with the particular hardships which they have imposed upon them.Those mutual restraints have put an end to almost all fair commerce between the two nations, and smugglers are now the principal importers, either of British goods into France, or of French goods into Great Britain.The principles which I have been examining in the foregoing chapter took their origin from private interest and the spirit of monopoly；those which I am going to examine in this, from national prejudice and animosity.They are, accordingly, as might well be expected, still more unreasonable.They are so, even upon the principles of the commercial system.

First, though it were certain that in the case of a free trade between France and England, for example, the balance would be in favour of France, it would by no means follow that such a trade would be disadvantageous to England, or that the general balance of its whole trade would thereby be turned more against it. If the wines of France are better and cheaper than those of Portugal, or its linens than those of Germany, it would be more advantageous for Great Britain to purchase both the wine and the foreign linen which it had occasion for of France, than of Portugal and Germany.Though the value of the annual importations from France would thereby be greatly augmented, the value of the whole annual importations would be diminished, in proportion as the French goods of the same quality were cheaper than those of the other two countries.This would be the case, even upon the supposition that the whole French goods imported were to be consumed in Great Britain.

But, secondly, a great part of them might be re-exported to other countries, where, being sold with profit, they might bring back a return equal in value, perhaps, to the prime cost of the whole French goods imported. What has frequently been said of the East India trade might possibly be true of the French；that though the greater part of East India goods were bought with gold and silver, the re-exportation of a part of them to other countries, brought back more gold and silver to that which carried on the trade than the prime cost of the whole amounted to.One of the most important branches of the Dutch trade, at present, consists in the carriage of French goods to other European countries.Some part even of the French wine drank in Great Britain is clandestinely imported from Holland and Zeeland.If there was either a free trade between France and England, or if French goods could be imported upon paying only the same duties as those of other European nations, to be drawn back upon exportation, England might have some share of a trade which is found so advantageous to Holland.

Thirdly, and lastly, there is no certain criterion by which we can determine on which side what is called the balance between any two countries lies, or which of them exports to the greatest value. National prejudice and animosity, prompted always by the private interest of particular traders, are the principles which generally direct our judgment upon all questions concerning it.There are two criterions, however, which have frequently been appealed to upon such occasions, the custom-house books and the course of exchange.The custom-house books, I think, it is now generally acknowledged, are a very uncertain criterion, on account of the inaccuracy of the valuation at which the greater part of goods are rated in them.The course of exchange is, perhaps, almost equally so.

When the exchange between two places, such as London and Paris, is at par, it is said to be a sign that the debts due from London to Paris are compensated by those due from Paris to London. On the contrary, when a premium is paid at London for a bill upon Paris, it is said to be a sign that the debts due from London to Paris are not compensated by those due from Paris to London, but that a balance in money must be sent out from the latter place；for the risk, trouble, and expense of exporting which, the premium is both demanded and given.But the ordinary state of debt and credit between those two cities must necessarily be regulated, it is said, by the ordinary course of their dealings with one another.When neither of them imports from the other to a greater amount than it exports to that other, the debts and credits of each may compensate one another.But when one of them imports from the other to a greater value than it exports to that other, the former necessarily becomes indebted to the latter in a greater sum than the latter becomes indebted to it；the debts and credits of each do not compensate one another, and money, must be sent out from that place of which the debts over-balance the credits.The ordinary course of exchange, therefore, being an indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between two places, must likewise be an indication of the ordinary course of their exports and imports, as these necessarily regulate that state.

But though the ordinary course of exchange should be allowed to be a sufficient indication of the ordinary state of debt and credit between any two places, it would not from thence follow, that the balance of trade was in favour of that place which had the ordinary state of debt and credit in its favour. The ordinary state of debt and credit between any two places is not always entirely regulated by the ordinary course of their dealings with one another；but is often influenced by that of the dealings of either with many other places.If it is usual, for example, for the merchants of England to pay for the goods which they buy of Hamburg, Danzig, Riga, etc.by bills upon Holland, the ordinary state of debt and credit between England and Holland will not be regulated entirely by the ordinary course of the dealings of those two countries with one another, but will be influenced by that of the dealings of England with those other places.England may be obliged to send out every year money to Holland, though its annual exports to that country may exceed very much the annual value of its imports from thence；and though what is called the balance of trade may be very much in favour of England.

In the way, besides, in which the par of exchange has hitherto been computed, the ordinary course of exchange can afford no sufficient indication that the ordinary state of debt and credit is in favour of that country which seems to have, or which is supposed to have, the ordinary course of exchange in its favour：or, in other words, the real exchange may be, and, in fact, often is so very different from the computed one, that from the course of the latter, no certain conclusion can, upon many occasions, be drawn concerning that of the former.

When for a sum of money paid in England, containing, according to the standard of the English mint, a certain number of ounces of pure silver, you receive a bill for a sum of money to be paid in France, containing, according to the standard of the French mint, an equal number of ounces of pure silver, exchange is said to be at par between England and France. When you pay more, you are supposed to give a premium, and exchange is said to be against England, and in favour of France.When you pay less, you are supposed to get a premium, and exchange is said to be against France, and in favour of England.

But, first, we cannot always judge of the value of the current money of different countries by the standard of their respective mints. In some it is more, in others it is less worn, clipt, and otherwise degenerated from that standard.But the value of the current coin of every country, compared with that of any other country, is in proportion not to the quantity of pure silver which it ought to contain, but to that which it actually does contain.Before the reformation of the silver coin in King William's time, exchange between England and Holland, computed, in the usual manner, according to the standard of their respective mints, was five and twenty per cent.against England.But the value of the current coin of England, as we learn from Mr.Lowndes, was at that time rather more than five and twenty per cent.below its standard value.The real exchange, therefore, may even at that time have been in favour of England, notwithstanding the computed exchange was so much against it；a smaller number of ounces of pure silver, actually paid in England, may have purchased a bill for a greater number of ounces of pure silver to be paid in Holland, and the man who was supposed to give, may in reality have got the premium.The French coin was, before the late reformation of the English gold coin, much less worn than the English, and was, perhaps two or three per cent.nearer its standard.If the computed exchange with France, therefore, was not more than two or three per cent.against England, the real exchange might have been in its favour.Since the reformation of the gold coin, the exchange has been constantly in favour of England, and against France.

Secondly, in some countries, the expense of coinage is defrayed by the government；in others, it is defrayed by the private people who carry their bullion to the mint, and the government even derives some revenue from the coinage. In England, it is defrayed by the government, and if you carry a pound weight of standard silver to the mint, you get back sixty-two shillings, containing a pound weight of the like standard silver.In France, a duty of eight per cent.is deducted for the coinage, which not only defrays the expense of it, but affords a small revenue to the government.In England, as the coinage costs nothing, the current coin can never be much more valuable than the quantity of bullion which it actually contains.In France, the workmanship, as you pay for it, adds to the value, in the same manner as to that of wrought plate.A sum of French money, therefore, containing a certain weight of pure silver, is more valuable than a sum of English money, containing an equal weight of pure silver, and must require more bullion, or other commodities, to purchase it.Though the current coin of the two countries, therefore, were equally near the standards of their respective mints, a sum of English money could not well purchase a sum of French money, containing an equal number of ounces of pure silver, nor consequently a bill upon France for such a sum.If for such a bill no more additional money was paid than what was sufficient to compensate the expense of the French coinage, the real exchange might be at par between the two countries, their debts and credits might mutually compensate one another, while the computed exchange was considerably in favour of France.If less than this was paid, the real exchange might be in favour of England, while the computed was in favour of France.

Thirdly, and lastly, in some places, as at Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, etc.，foreign bills of exchange are paid in what they call bank money；while in others, as at London, Lisbon, Antwerp, Leghorn, etc.，they are paid in the common currency of the country. What is called bank money is always of more value than the same nominal sum of common currency.A thousand guilders in the bank of Amsterdam, for example, are of more value than a thousand guilders of Amsterdam currency.The difference between them is called the agio of the bank, which, at Amsterdam, is generally about five per cent.Supposing the current money of two countries equally near to the standard of their respective mints, and that the one pays foreign bills in this common currency, while the other pays them in bank money, it is evident that the computed exchange may be in favour of that which pays in bank money, though the real exchange should be in favour of that which pays in current money；for the same reason that the computed exchange may be in favour of that which pays in better money, or in money nearer to its own standard, though the real exchange should be in favour of that which pays in worse.The computed exchange, before the late reformation of the gold coin, was generally against London with Amsterdam, Hamburg, Venice, and, I believe, with all other places which pay in what is called bank money.It will by no means follow, however, that the real exchange was against it.Since the reformation of the gold coin, it has been in favour of London even with those places.The computed exchange has generally been in favour of London with Lisbon, Antwerp, Leghorn, and, if you except France, I believe, with most other parts of Europe that pay in common currency；and it is not improbable that the real exchange was so too.关于储蓄银行尤其是阿姆斯特丹的储蓄银行的离题论述

Digression Concerning Banks of Deposit, Particularly Concerning that of Amsterdam

大国的通货是由本国铸币构成的，国家可以通过改铸来保持其通货价值。但是小国的通货则充斥着种种外币，因此该通货本身的价值便不很确定，对其价值的评价便相对较低，在汇兑中处于不利地位。例如，因为在1609年以前，阿姆斯特丹的通货价值比新出良币的价值低9%。

为了弥补这种不利，这些小国规定一定价值的外国汇票要以银行货币来支付，而银行是受国家支持的，能够保证货币的质量。阿姆斯特丹银行等便是因此而设立的。银行接受各种铸币，扣除管理费用后，按良币标准计算价值，记入银行账簿，即为银行货币，它能保证货币价值的标准和一致，并且其安全具有保障，因此产生了扣头。人们也倾向于将货币留在银行中，这样它的优势才能得以体现。

铸币存款只是银行资本的极小一部分。银行还接受金银条块的储蓄，并按其价值的95%给予银行信贷，同时给予受领证书。持有证书者可在六个月内偿还信贷和保管费，并取回金银。因为银行信贷所给的金银价格要低于造币厂价格，而造币厂价格又低于市场价格，受领证书便相当于金银条块的造币厂价格和市场价格之间的差价，所以，它也值一些钱，存款人便可以将受领证书出卖。而只有兼具银行货币和受领证书才能从银行领取金银，所以银行货币和受领证书的价格之和便为金银条块的价格。

铸币存款也能获得受领证书，但这种证书是没有价值的，所以在银行贴水高的时候，这种受领证书往往任其满期。虽然受领证书过期的银行货币数额巨大，但在银行货币中所占的比例却很小，而金银条块的存储才是信贷的大头。

没有受领证书便不能取款，但在困难时期可以有特例，因为此时人们都希望取出存款，所以受领证书便会被热炒。因此银行会向有银行货币记录在案的人支付全额，但只对有受领证书者支付百分之二到百分之三。

即使在正常情况下，受领证书持有者的利益和银行货币所有者的利益也是针锋相对的，因此往往会导致投机倒把。为了防止欺诈行为，银行对贴水进行了规定，使得银行货币和流通货币的价格比例与其固有价值比例相当。

银行宣称不会将储金贷出，阿姆斯特丹的市长负责管理银行并尽职尽责。事实证明，这个承诺是可信的。

目前，阿姆斯特丹银行已有巨额的储金，并且银行获利颇丰。银行的设立确实给商人带来了便利。使用银行货币对付的国家，因为其固有价值能保持稳定，所以在汇兑中更占优势。he currency of a great state, such as France or England, generally consists almost entirely of its own coin. Should this currency, Ttherefore, be at any time worn, clipt, or otherwise degraded below its standard value, the state by a reformation of its coin can effectually re-establish its currency.But the currency of a small state, such as Genoa or Hamburg, can seldom consist altogether in its own coin, but must be made up, in a great measure, of the coins of all the neighbouring states with which its inhabitants have a continual intercourse.Such a state, therefore, by reforming its coin, will not always be able to reform its currency.If foreign bills of exchange are paid in this currency, the uncertain value of any sum, of what is in its own nature so uncertain, must render the exchange always very much against such a state, its currency being, in all foreign states, necessarily valued even below what it is worth.

In order to remedy the inconvenience to which this disadvantageous exchange must have subjected their merchants, such small states, when they began to attend to the interest of trade, have frequently enacted, that foreign bills of exchange of a certain value should be paid not in common currency, but by an order upon, or by a transfer in the books of a certain bank, established upon the credit, and under the protection of the state；this bank being always obliged to pay, in good and true money, exactly according to the standard of the state. The banks of Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, Hamburg, and Nuremberg, seem to have been all originally established with this view, though some of them may have afterwards been made subservient to other purposes.The money of such banks being better than the common currency of the country, necessarily bore an agio, which was greater or smaller, according as the currency was supposed to be more or less degraded below the standard of the state.The agio of the Bank of Hamburg, for example, which is said to be commonly about fourteen per cent.is the supposed difference between the good standard money of the state, and the clipt, worn, and diminished currency poured into it from all the neighbouring states.

Before 1609 the great quantity of clipt and worn foreign coin, which the extensive trade of Amsterdam brought from all parts of Europe, reduced the value of its currency about nine per cent. below that of good money fresh from the mint.Such money no sooner appeared than it was melted down or carried away, as it always is in such circumstances.The merchants, with plenty of currency, could not always find a sufficient quantity of good money to pay their bills of exchange；and the value of those bills, in spite of several regulations which were made to prevent it, became in a great measure uncertain.

In order to remedy these inconveniences, a bank was established in 1609 under the guarantee of the city. This bank received both foreign coin, and the light and worn coin of the country at its real intrinsic value in the good standard money of the country, deducting only so much as was necessary for defraying the expense of coinage, and the other necessary expense of management.For the value which remained, after this small deduction was made, it gave a credit in its books.This credit was called bank money, which, as it represented money exactly according to the standard of the mint, was always of the same real value, and intrinsically worth more than current money.It was at the same time enacted, that all bills drawn upon or negotiated at Amsterdam of the value of six hundred guilders and upwards should be paid in bank money, which at once took away all uncertainty in the value of those bills.Every merchant, in consequence of this regulation, was obliged to keep an account with the bank in order to pay his foreign bills of exchange, which necessarily occasioned a certain demand for bank money.

Bank money, over and above its intrinsic superiority to currency, and the additional value which this demand necessarily gives it, has likewise some other advantages. It is secure from fire, robbery, and other accidents；the city of Amsterdam is bound for it；it can be paid away by a simple transfer, without the trouble of counting, or the risk of transporting it from one place to another.In consequence of those different advantages, it seems from the beginning to have borne agio, and it is generally believed that all the money originally deposited in the bank was allowed to remain there, nobody caring to demand payment of a debt which he could sell for a premium in the market.By demanding payment of the bank, the owner of a bank credit would lose this premium.As a shilling fresh from the mint will buy no more goods in the market than one of our common worn shillings, so the good and true money which might be brought from the coffers of the bank into those of a private person, being mixed and confounded with the common currency of the country, would be of no more value than that currency, from which it could no longer be readily distinguished.While it remained in the coffers of the bank, its superiority was known and ascertained.When it had come into those of a private person, its superiority could not well be ascertained without more trouble than perhaps the difference was worth.By being brought from the coffers of the bank, besides, it lost all the other advantages of bank money；its security, its easy and safe transferability, its use in paying foreign bills of exchange.Over and above all this, it could not be brought from those coffers, as it will appear by and by, without previously paying for the keeping.

Those deposits of coin, or those deposits which the bank was bound to restore in coin, constituted the original capital of the bank, or the whole value of what was represented by what is called bank money. At present they are supposed to constitute but a very small part of it.In order to facilitate the trade in bullion, the bank has been for these many years in the practice of giving credit in its books upon deposits of gold and silver bullion.This credit is generally about five per cent.below the mint price of such bullion.The bank grants at the same time what is called a recipe or receipt, entitling the person who makes the deposit, or the bearer, to take out the bullion again at any time within six months, upon re-transferring to the bank a quantity of bank money equal to that for which credit had been given in its books when the deposit was made, and upon paying one-fourth per cent.for the keeping, if the deposit was in silver；and one-half per cent.if it was in gold；but at the same time declaring, that in default of such payment, and upon the expiration of this term, the deposit should belong to the bank at the price at which it had been received, or for which credit had been given in the transfer books.What is thus paid for the keeping of the deposit may be considered as a sort of warehouse rent；and why this warehouse rent should be so much dearer for gold than for silver, several different reasons have been assigned.The fineness of gold, it has been said, is more difficult to be ascertained than that of silver.Frauds are more easily practised, and occasion a greater loss in the more precious metal.Silver, besides, being the standard metal, the state, it has been said, wishes to encourage more the making of deposits of silver than those of gold.

Deposits of bullion are most commonly made when the price is somewhat lower than ordinary；and they are taken out again when it happens to rise. In Holland the market price of bullion is generally above the mint price, for the same reason that it was so in England before the late reformation of the gold coin.The difference is said to be commonly from about six to sixteen stivers upon the mark, or eight ounces of silver of eleven parts fine, and one part alloy.The bank price, or the credit which the bank gives for deposits of such silver（when made in foreign coin, of which the fineness is well known and ascertained, such as Mexico dollars），is twenty-two guilders the mark；the mint price is about twenty-three guilders, and the market price is from twenty-three guilders six to twenty-three guilders sixteen stivers, or from two to three per cent.above the mint price.The proportions between the bank price, the mint price, and the market price of gold bullion, are nearly the same.A person can generally sell his receipt for the difference between the mint price of bullion and the market price.A receipt for bullion is almost always worth something, and it very seldom happens, therefore, that anybody suffers his receipt to expire, or allows his bullion to fall to the bank at the price at which it had been received, either by not taking it out before the end of the six months, or by neglecting to pay the one-fourth or one-half per cent.in order to obtain a new receipt for another six months.This, however, though it happens seldom, is said to happen sometimes, and more frequently with regard to gold, than with regard to silver, on account of the higher warehouse-rent which is paid for the keeping of the more precious metal.

The following are the prices at which the Bank of Amsterdam at present（September，1775）receives bullion and coin of different kind：-SILVER

Mexico dollars Guilders B-22 per mark

French crowns Guilders B-22 per mark

English silver coin Guilders B-22 per mark

Mexico dollars new coin 21 10

Ducatoons 3

Rix dollars 2 8

Bar silver containing eleven-twelfths fine silver 21 per mark, and in this proportion down to 1/4 fine, on which 5 guilders are given.

Fine bars，93 per mark.

GOLD

Portugal coin B-310 per mark

Guineas B-310 per mark

Louis d'ors new B-310 per mark

Ditto old 300

New ducats 4 19 8 per ducat

Bar or ingot gold is received in proportion to its fineness compared with the above foreign gold coin. Upon fine bars the bank gives 340 per mark.In general, however, something more is given upon coin of a known fineness, than upon gold and silver bars, of which the fineness cannot be ascertained but by a process of melting and assaying.

The person who by making a deposit of bullion obtains both a bank credit and receipt, pays his bills of exchange as they become due with his bank credit；and either sells or keeps his receipt according as he judges that the price of bullion is likely to rise or to fall. The receipt and the bank credit seldom keep long together, and there is no occasion that they should.The person who has a receipt, and who wants to take out bullion, finds always plenty of bank credits, or bank money to buy at the ordinary price；and the person who has bank money, and wants to take out bullion, finds receipts always in equal abundance.

The owners of bank credits, and the holders of receipts, constitute two different sorts of creditors against the bank. The holder of a receipt cannot draw out the bullion for which it is granted, without re-assigning to the bank a sum of bank money equal to the price at which the bullion had been received.If he has no bank money of his own, he must purchase it of those who have it.The owner of bank money cannot draw out bullion without producing to the bank receipts for the quantity which he wants.If he has none of his own, he must buy them of those who have them.The holder of a receipt, when he purchases bank money, purchases the power of taking out a quantity of bullion, of which the mint price is five per cent.above the bank price.The agio of five per cent.therefore, which he commonly pays for it, is paid not for an imaginary, but for a real value.The owner of bank money, when he purchases a receipt, purchases the power of taking out a quantity of bullion of which the market price is commonly from two to three per cent.above the mint price.The price which he pays for it, therefore, is paid likewise for a real value.The price of the receipt, and the price of the bank money, compound or make up between them the full value or price of the bullion.

Upon deposits of the coin current in the country, the bank grants receipts likewise as well as bank credits；but those receipts are frequently of no value, and will bring no price in the market. Upon ducatoons, for example, which in the currency pass for three guilders three stivers each, the bank gives a credit of three guilders only, or five per cent.below their current value.It grants a receipt likewise intitling the bearer to take out the number of ducatoons deposited at any time within six months, upon paying one-fourth per cent.for the keeping.This receipt will frequently bring no price in the market.Three guilders bank money generally sell in the market for three guilders three stivers, the full value of the ducatoons, if they were taken out of the bank；and before they can be taken out, one-fourth per cent.must be paid for the keeping, which would be mere loss to the holder of the receipt.If the agio of the bank, however, should at any time fall to three per cent.such receipts might bring some price in the market, and might sell for one and three fourths per cent.But the agio of the bank being now generally about five per cent.such receipts are frequently allowed to expire, or, as they express it, to fall to the bank.The receipts which are given for deposits of gold ducats fall to it yet more frequently, because a higher warehouse-rent, or one-half per cent.must be paid for the keeping of them before they can be taken out again.The five per cent.which the bank gains, when deposits either of coin or bullion are allowed to fall to it, may be considered as the warehouse-rent for the perpetual keeping of such deposits.

The sum of bank money for which the receipts are expired must be very considerable. It must comprehend the whole original capital of the bank, which, it is generally supposed, has been allowed to remain there from the time it was first deposited, nobody caring either to renew his receipt or to take out his deposit, as, for the reasons already assigned, neither the one nor the other could be done without loss.But whatever may be the amount of this sum, the proportion which it bears to the whole mass of bank money is supposed to be very small.The bank of Amsterdam has for these many years past been the great warehouse of Europe for bullion, for which the receipts are very seldom allowed to expire, or, as they express it, to fall to the bank.The far greater part of the bank money, or of the credits upon the books of the bank, is supposed to have been created, for these many years past, by such deposits which the dealers in bullion are continually both making and withdrawing.

No demand can be made upon the bank but by means of a recipe or receipt. The smaller mass of bank money, for which the receipts are expired, is mixed and confounded with the much greater mass for which they are still in force；so that, though there may be a considerable sum of bank money, for which there are no receipts, there is no specific sum or portion of it, which may not at any time be demanded by one.The bank cannot be debtor to two persons for the same thing；and the owner of bank money who has no receipt, cannot demand payment of the bank till he buys one.In ordinary and quiet times, he can find no difficulty in getting one to buy at the market price, which generally corresponds with the price at which he can sell the coin or bullion it entities him to take out of the bank.

It might be otherwise during a public calamity；an invasion, for example, such as that of the French in 1672. The owners of bank money being then all eager to draw it out of the bank, in order to have it in their own keeping, the demand for receipts might raise their price to an exorbitant height.The holders of them might form extravagant expectations, and, instead of two or three per cent.demand half the bank money for which credit had been given upon the deposits that the receipts had respectively been granted for.The enemy, informed of the constitution of the bank, might even buy them up, in order to prevent the carrying away of the treasure.In such emergencies, the bank, it is supposed, would break through its ordinary rule of making payment only to the holders of receipts.The holders of receipts, who had no bank money, must have received within two or three per cent.of the value of the deposit for which their respective receipts had been granted.The bank, therefore, it is said, would in this case make no scruple of paying, either with money or bullion, the full value of what the owners of bank money who could get no receipts were credited for in its books；paying at the same time two or three per cent.to such holders of receipts as had no bank money, that being the whole value which in this state of things could justly be supposed due to them.

Even in ordinary and quiet times it is the interest of the holders of receipts to depress the agio, in order either to buy bank money（and consequently the bullion, which their receipts would then enable them to take out of the bank）so much cheaper, or to sell their receipts to those who have bank money, and who want to take out bullion, so much dearer；the price of a receipt being generally equal to the difference between the market price of bank money, and that of the coin or bullion for which the receipt had been granted. It is the interest of the owners of bank money, on the contrary, to raise the agio, in order either to sell their bank money so much dearer, or to buy a receipt so much cheaper.To prevent the stock-jobbing tricks which those opposite interests might sometimes occasion, the bank has of late years come to the resolution to sell at all times bank money for currency, at five per cent.agio, and to buy it in again at four per cent.agio.In consequence of this resolution, the agio can never either rise above five, or sink below four per cent.and the proportion between the market price of bank and that of current money, is kept at all times very near to the proportion between their intrinsic values.Before this resolution was taken, the market price of bank money used sometimes to rise so high as nine per cent.agio, and sometimes to sink so low as par, according as opposite interests happened to influence the market.

The bank of Amsterdam professes to lend out no part of what is deposited with it, but, for every guilder for which it gives credit in its books, to keep in its repositories the value of a guilder either in money or bullion. That it keeps in its repositories all the money or bullion for which there are receipts in force, for which it is at all times liable to be called upon, and which, in reality, is continually going from it and returning to it again, cannot well be doubted.But whether it does so likewise with regard to that part of its capital, for which the receipts are long ago expired, for which in ordinary and quiet times it cannot be called upon, and which in reality is very likely to remain with it for ever, or as long as the States of the United Provinces subsist, may perhaps appear more uncertain.At Amsterdam, however, no point of faith is better established than that for every guilder, circulated as bank money, there is a correspondent guilder in gold or silver to be found in the treasure of the bank.The city is guarantee that it should be so.The bank is under the direction of the four reigning burgomasters, who are changed every year.Each new set of burgomasters visits the treasure, compares it with the books, receives it upon oath, and delivers it over, with the same awful solemnity, to the set which succeeds；and in that sober and religious country oaths are not yet disregarded.A rotation of this kind seems alone a sufficient security against any practices which cannot be avowed.Amidst all the revolutions which faction has ever occasioned in the government of Amsterdam, the prevailing party has at no time accused their predecessors of infidelity in the administration of the bank.No accusation could have affected more deeply the reputation and fortune of the disgraced party, and if such an accusation could have been supported, we may be assured that it would have been brought.In 1672，when the French king was at Utrecht, the bank of Amsterdam paid so readily as left no doubt of the fidelity with which it had observed its engagements.Some of the pieces which were then brought from its repositories appeared to have been scorched with the fire which happened in the town-house soon after the bank was established.Those pieces, therefore, must have lain there from that time.

What may be the amount of the treasure in the bank is a question which has long employed speculations of the curious. Nothing but conjecture can be offered concerning it.It is generally reckoned that there are about two thousand people who keep accounts with the bank, and allowing them to have, one with another, the value of fifteen hundred pounds sterling lying upon their respective accounts（a very large allowance），the whole quantity of bank money, and consequently of treasure in the bank, will amount to about three millions sterling, or, at eleven guilders the pound sterling, thirty-three millions of guilders；a great sum, and sufficient to carry on a very extensive circulation, but vastly below the extravagant ideas which some people have formed of this treasure.

The city of Amsterdam derives a considerable revenue from the bank. Besides what may be called the warehouse-rent above mentioned, each person, upon first opening an account with the bank, pays a fee of ten guilders；and for every new account three guilders three stivers；for every transfer two stivers；and if the transfer is for less than three hundred guilders, six stivers, in order to discourage the multiplicity of small transactions.The person who neglects to balance his account twice in the year forfeits twenty-five guilders.The person who orders a transfer for more than is upon his account, is obliged to pay three per cent.for the sum overdrawn, and his order is set aside into the bargain.The bank is supposed too to make a considerable profit by the sale of the foreign coin or bullion which sometimes falls to it by the expiring of receipts, and which is always kept till it can be sold with advantage.It makes a profit likewise by selling bank money at five per cent.agio, and buying it in at four.These different emoluments amount to a good deal more than what is necessary for paying the salaries of officers, and defraying the expense of management.What is paid for the keeping of bullion upon receipts, is alone supposed to amount to a neat annual revenue of between one hundred and fifty thousand and two hundred thousand guilders.Public utility, however, and not revenue, was the original object of this institution.Its object was to relieve the merchants from the inconvenience of a disadvantageous exchange.The revenue which has arisen from it was unforeseen, and may be considered as accidental.But it is now time to return from this long digression, into which I have been insensibly led in endeavouring to explain the reasons why the exchange between the countries which pay in what is called bank money, and those which pay in common currency, should generally appear to be in favour of the former, and against the latter.The former pay in a species of money of which the intrinsic value is always the same, and exactly agreeable to the standard of their respective mints；the latter in a species of money of which the intrinsic value is continually varying, and is almost always more or less below that standard.

第二节　论即便根据其他原则，这种特殊限制也不合理　PART 2　Of the Unreasonableness of those Extraordinary Restraints upon other Principles

因与某国的贸易差额对我方不利而限制其商品进口的做法，是因循这样的主张：认为双方只有贸易平衡才各无得失，如果贸易不平衡，则必然是有得有失。但事实上，自然地开展贸易对双方都是有益的，如果横加干涉，就有可能两败俱伤。这里所说的得失并不单指金银量的增加，而是指一国年产品交换价值的增加。

在贸易平衡且两国进行贸易的都是国产商品时，双方皆得利且利益相当，因为彼此补偿了对方的收入。而如果一国贸易的是国产商品，另一国贸易的是外国商品，虽然双方也可获利，但是出口国产商品的国家获益较多，而出口外国商品的国家所得利益中的大部分要补偿购入外国商品的费用。在两种商品兼而有之的情况下也是如此，在贸易中，国产商品占主要地位的国家获益更多。

而用金银进行支付的贸易，与用商品进行支付的一样，也能获得一定的利益。因为用金银从国外购买的商品有可能在国内拥有更大的价值，这个过程是能增加资本总量的，虽然其有益程度不及直接用本国商品所进行的贸易。

因此，英国反对法国葡萄酒的言论乃是无稽之谈。购买价美物廉的法国葡萄酒要比自己酿造，或从他国购买昂贵的葡萄酒划算得多，并且，当葡萄酒变得廉价时，酗酒并不会变得司空见惯。只不过英国和法国之间的贸易竞争引发的仇恨，使得法国商品被禁止。

而这种做法是目光短浅的。国际贸易应该使各国互利互惠，而现在却酿成仇恨和嫉妒。商人们的垄断精神迷惑了大众，使得人们相信只有对富有的邻国课以重税才能保护自己。事实上，邻国的富裕对本国是有利的，因为它的财富有可能使本国交换更多的价值，并且为本国产品提供广阔的市场。而英国和法国之间如果能理性地开展正常贸易，那么两国都将从中获益。因为英法地理上的比邻关系使得贸易能够往返多次，从而推动多倍的产业发展，并且法国有两千三百万人口，相比起北美贸易——那里需要几年才能往返一次，并且人口不过三百万，对法贸易将是更有利可图的。

但是，某些人相信不利的贸易差额会导致国家衰亡，从而阻碍了英法正常贸易的展开。事实上，贸易差额并不能左右一个国家的命运，而自由贸易却能使许多城市富足，并且，一国的盛衰取决于生产和消费的差额，如果年生产量超过年消费量，那么社会资本得以增加，并促进再生产的进行；反之，社会资本则会缩减。这个差额不同于贸易差额，在贸易差额不利的国家中，这个差额却仍然有可能造福于斯。n the foregoing part of this chapter I have endeavoured to show, even upon the principles of the commercial system, how Iunnecessary it is to lay extraordinary restraints upon the importation of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous.

Nothing, however, can be more absurd than this whole doctrine of the balance of trade, upon which, not only these restraints, but almost all the other regulations of commerce are founded. When two places trade with one another, this doctrine supposes that, if the balance be even, neither of them either loses or gains；but if it leans in any degree to one side, that one of them loses, and the other gains in proportion to its declension from the exact equilibrium.Both suppositions are false.A trade which is forced by means of bounties and monopolies, may be, and commonly is disadvantageous to the country in whose favour it is meant to be established, as I shall endeavour to show hereafter.But that trade which, without force or constraint, is naturally and regularly carried on between any two places, is always advantageous, though not always equally so, to both.

By advantage or gain, I understand, not the increase of the quantity of gold and silver, but that of the exchangeable value of the annual produce of the land and labour of the country, or the increase of the annual revenue of its inhabitants.

If the balance be even, and if the trade between the two places consist altogether in the exchange of their native commodities, they will, upon most occasions, not only both gain, but they will gain equally, or very near equally：each will in this case afford a market for a part of the surplus produce of the other：each will replace a capital which had been employed in raising and preparing for the market this part of the surplus produce of the other, and which had been distributed among, and given revenue and maintenance to a certain number of its inhabitants. Some part of the inhabitants of each, therefore, will indirectly derive their revenue and maintenance from the other.As the commodities exchanged too are supposed to be of equal value, so the two capitals employed in the trade will, upon most occasions, be equal, or very nearly equal；and both being employed in raising the native commodities of the two countries, the revenue and maintenance which their distribution will afford to the inhabitants of each will be equal, or very nearly equal.This revenue and maintenance, thus mutually afforded, will be greater or smaller in proportion to the extent of their dealings.If these should annually amount to an hundred thousand pounds, for example, or to a million on each side, each of them would afford an annual revenue in the one case of an hundred thousand pounds, in the other, of a million, to the inhabitants of the other.

If their trade should be of such a nature that one of them exported to the other nothing but native commodities, while the returns of that other consisted altogether in foreign goods；the balance, in this case, would still be supposed even, commodities being paid for with commodities. They would, in this case too, both gain, but they would not gain equally；and the inhabitants of the country which exported nothing but native commodities would derive the greatest revenue from the trade.If England, for example, should import from France nothing but the native commodities of that country, and, not having such commodities of its own as were in demand there, should annually repay them by sending thither a large quantity of foreign goods, tobacco, we shall suppose, and East India goods；this trade, though it would give some revenue to the inhabitants of both countries, would give more to those of France than to those of England.The whole French capital annually employed in it would annually be distributed among the people of France.But that part of the English capital only which was employed in producing the English commodities with which those foreign goods were purchased, would be annually distributed among the people of England.The greater part of it would replace the capitals which had been employed in Virginia, Indostan, and China, and which had given revenue and maintenance to the inhabitants of those distant countries.If the capitals were equal, or nearly equal, therefore, this employment of the French capital would augment much more the revenue of the people of France, than that of the English capital would the revenue of the people of England.France would in this case carry on a direct foreign trade of consumption with England；whereas England would carry on a round-about trade of the same kind with France.The different effects of a capital employed in the direct, and of one employed in the round-about foreign trade of consumption, have already been fully explained.

There is not, probably, between any two countries, a trade which consists altogether in the exchange either of native commodities on both sides, or of native commodities on one side and of foreign goods on the other. Almost all countries exchange with one another partly native and partly foreign goods.That country, however, in whose cargoes there is the greatest proportion of native, and the least of foreign goods, will always be the principal gainer.

If it was not with tobacco and East India goods, but with gold and silver, that England paid for the commodities annually imported from France, the balance, in this case, would be supposed uneven, commodities not being paid for with commodities, but with gold and silver. The trade, however, would, in this case, as in the foregoing, give some revenue to the inhabitants of both countries, but more to those of France than to those of England.It would give some revenue to those of England.The capital which had been employed in producing the English goods that purchased this gold and silver, the capital which had been distributed among, and given revenue to, certain inhabitants of England, would thereby be replaced, and enabled to continue that employment.The whole capital of England would no more be diminished by this exportation of gold and silver, than by the exportation of an equal value of any other goods.On the contrary, it would, in most cases, be augmented.No goods are sent abroad but those for which the demand is supposed to be greater abroad than at home, and of which the returns consequently, it is expected, will be of more value at home than the commodities exported.If the tobacco which, in England, is worth only a hundred thousand pounds, when sent to France will purchase wine which is, in England, worth a hundred and ten thousand pounds, the exchange will augment the capital of England by ten thousand pounds.If a hundred thousand pounds of English gold, in the same manner, purchase French wine, which, in England, is worth a hundred and ten thousand, this exchange will equally augment the capital of England by ten thousand pounds.As a merchant who has a hundred and ten thousand pounds worth of wine in his cellar, is a richer man than he who has only a hundred thousand pounds worth of tobacco in his warehouse, so is he likewise a richer man than he who has only a hundred thousand pounds worth of gold in his coffers.He can put into motion a greater quantity of industry, and give revenue, maintenance, and employment, to a greater number of people than either of the other two.But the capital of the country is equal to the capitals of all its different inhabitants, and the quantity of industry which can be annually maintained in it, is equal to what all those different capitals can maintain.Both the capital of the country, therefore, and the quantity of industry which can be annually maintained in it, must generally be augmented by this exchange.It would, indeed, be more advantageous for England that it could purchase the wines of France with its own hard-ware and broad-cloth, than with either the tobacco of Virginia, or the gold and silver of Brazil and Peru.A direct foreign trade of consumption is always more advantageous than a round-about one.But a round-about foreign trade of consumption, which is carried on with gold and silver, does not seem to be less advantageous than any other equally round-about one.Neither is a country which has no mines, more likely to be exhausted of gold and silver by this annual exportation of those metals, than one which does not grow tobacco by the like annual exportation of that plant.As a country which has wherewithal to buy tobacco will never be long in want of it, so neither will one be long in want of gold and silver which has wherewithal to purchase those metals.

It is a losing trade, it is said, which a workman carries on with the alehouse；and the trade which a manufacturing nation would naturally carry on with a wine country, may be considered as a trade of the same nature. I answer, that the trade with the alehouse is not necessarily a losing trade.In its own nature it is just as advantageous as any other, though, perhaps, somewhat more liable to be abused.The employment of a brewer, and even that of a retailer of fermented liquors, are as necessary divisions of labour as any other.It will generally be more advantageous for, a workman to buy of the brewer the quantity he has occasion for, than to brew it himself, and if he is a poor workman, it will generally be more advantageous for him to buy it, by little and little, of the retailer, than a large quantity of the brewer.He may no doubt buy too much of either, as he may of any other dealers in his neighbourhood, of the butcher, if he is a glutton, or of the draper, if he affects to be a beau among his companions.It is advantageous to the great body of workmen, notwithstanding, that all these trades should be free, though this freedom may be abused in all of them, and is more likely to be so, perhaps, in some than in others.Though individuals, besides, may sometimes ruin their fortunes by an excessive consumption of fermented liquors, there seems to be no risk that a nation should do so.Though in every country there are many people who spend upon such liquors more than they can afford, there are always many more who spend less.It deserves to be remarked too, that, if we consult experience, the cheapness of wine seems to be a cause, not of drunkenness, but of sobriety.The inhabitants of the wine countries are in general the soberest people in Europe；witness the Spainards, the Italians, and the inhabitants of the southern provinces of France.People are seldom guilty of excess in what is their daily fare.Nobody affects the character of liberality and good fellowship, by being profuse of a liquor which is as cheap as small beer.On the contrary, in the countries which, either from excessive heat or cold, produce no grapes, and where wine consequently is dear and a rarity, drunkenness is a common vice, as among the northern nations, and all those who live between the tropics, the negroes, for example, on the coast of Guinea.When a French regiment comes from some of the northern provinces of France, where wine is somewhat dear, to be quartered in the southern, where it is very cheap, the soldiers, I have frequently heard it observed, are at first debauched by the cheapness and novelty of good wine；but after a few months residence, the greater part of them become as sober as the rest of the inhabitants.Were the duties upon foreign wines, and the excises upon malt, beer, and ale, to be taken away all at once, it might, in the same manner, occasion in Great Britain a pretty general and temporary drunkenness among the middling and inferior ranks of people, which would probably be soon followed by a permanent and almost universal sobriety.At present drunkenness is by no means the vice of people of fashion, or of those who can easily afford the most expensive liquors.A gentleman drunk with ale, has scarce ever been seen among us.The restraints upon the wine trade in Great Britain, besides, do not so much seem calculated to hinder the people from going, if I may say so, to the alehouse, as from going where they can buy the best and cheapest liquor.They favour the wine trade of Portugal, and discourage that of France.The Portugese, it is said, indeed, are better customers for our manufactures than the French, and should therefore be encouraged in preference to them.As they give us their custom, it is pretended, we should give them ours.The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire；for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers.A great trader purchases his goods always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

By such maxims as these, however, nations have been taught that their interest consisted in beggaring all their neighbours. Each nation has been made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss.Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity.The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe, than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers.The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy.But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of any body but themselves.

That it was the spirit of monopoly which originally both invented and propagated this doctrine, cannot be doubted；and they who first taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it. In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest.The proposition is so very manifest, that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it；nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind.Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.As it is the interest of the freemen of a corporation to hinder the rest of the inhabitants from employing any workmen but themselves, so it is the interest of the merchants and manufacturers of every country to secure to themselves the monopoly of the home market.Hence in Great Britain, and in most other European countries, the extraordinary duties upon almost all goods imported by alien merchants.Hence the high duties and prohibitions upon all those foreign manufactures which can come into competition with our own.Hence too the extraordinary restraints upon the importation of almost all sorts of goods from those countries with which the balance of trade is supposed to be disadvantageous；that is, from those against whom national animosity happens to be most violently inflamed.

The wealth of a neighbouring nation, however, though dangerous in war and politics, is certainly advantageous in trade. In a state of hostility it may enable our enemies to maintain fleets and armies superior to our own；but in a state of peace and commerce it must likewise enable them to exchange with us to a greater value, and to afford a better market, either for the immediate produce of our own industry, or for whatever is purchased with that produce.As a rich man is likely to be a better customer to the industrious people in his neighbourhood, than a poor, so is likewise a rich nation.A rich man, indeed, who is himself a manufacturer, is a very dangerous neighbour to all those who deal in the same way.All the rest of the neighbourhood, however, by far the greatest number, profit by the good market which his expense affords them.They even profit by his underselling the poorer workmen who deal in the same way with him.The manufacturers of a rich nation, in the same manner, may no doubt be very dangerous rivals to those of their neighbours.This very competition, however, is advantageous to the great body of the people, who profit greatly besides by the good market which the great expense of such a nation affords them in every other way.Private people who want to make a fortune, never think of retiring to the remote and poor provinces of the country, but resort either to the capital, or to some of the great commercial towns.They know, that, where little wealth 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 maxims 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, bold 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 coasts 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 twenty-four millions of inhabitants.Our North American colonies were never supposed to contain more than three millions：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 country which does so.Holland, perhaps, approaches the nearest to this character of any, though still very remote from it；and Holland, it is acknowledged, not only derives its whole wealth, but a great part of its necessary subsistence, from foreign trade.

There is another balance, indeed, which has already been explained, very different from the balance of trade, and which, according as it happens to be either favourable or unfavourable, necessarily occasions the prosperity or decay of every nation. This is the balance of the annual produce and consumption.If the exchangeable value of the annual produce, it has already been observed, exceeds that of the annual consumption, the capital of the society must annually increase in proportion to this excess.The society in this case lives within its revenue, and what is annually saved out of its revenue, is naturally added to its capital, and employed so as to increase still further the annual produce.If the exchangeable value of the annual produce, on the contrary, fall short of the annual consumption, the capital of the society must annually decay in proportion to this deficiency.The expense of the society in this case exceeds its revenue, and necessarily encroaches upon its capital.Its capital, therefore, must necessarily decay, and, together with it, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its industry.

This balance of produce and consumption is entirely different from, what is called, the balance of trade. It might take place in a nation which had no foreign trade, but which was entirely separated from all the world.It may take place in the whole globe of the earth, of which the wealth, population, and improvement may be either gradually increasing or gradually decaying.

The balance of produce and consumption may be constantly in favour of a nation, though what is called the balance of trade be generally against it. A nation may import to a greater value than it exports for half a century, perhaps, together；the gold and silver which comes into it during all this time may be all immediately sent out of it；its circulating coin may gradually decay, different sorts of paper money being substituted in its place, and even the debts too which it contracts in the principal nations with whom it deals, may be gradually increasing；and yet its real wealth, the exchangeable value of the annual produce of its lands and labour, may, during the same period, have been increasing in a much greater proportion.The state of our North American colonies, and of the trade which they carried on with Great Britain, before the commencement of the present disturbances, may serve as a proof that this is by no means an impossible supposition.第四章　论退税　Chapter Ⅳ　Of Drawbacks导读

商人要开拓国外市场，就需要某种出口奖励，退税便是其中一种，而且是最合理的一种，因为它不会对国内资本进行违反规律的引导，也不会打破产业间的自然平衡和劳动的自然分工，只是防止税收对这些自然平衡的干扰，所以，退税对产业发展起到了一定的有益的保护作用。

对于进口商品的再出口也可以退税。商人在出口了进口商品之后，可以被返还旧补助税（进口商品税）的一半。而对于旧补助税后征收的诸种税收，则可全部返还。

对于某些进口量大大多于国内消费量的外国商品，出口后可以返还全部税收，包括旧补助税。例如，英国大量进口的烟草无法在本国消费，必然需要外销，因此烟草出口便可获得全额退税；砂糖也是如此，如果在一年内再出口，也可获得全额退税。

对于某些被禁止进口的商品，尽管也可以缴税进口，以供出口，但是出口后不享受退税的待遇，这是为了阻止这些商品的进口。而受到英国商人仇视的法国货再出口时，几乎全都不享受退税。

对于葡萄酒再出口的退税是非常优惠的，可以退还进口税的一多以上。这是因为葡萄酒的进口税非常高昂，如果没有优惠政策，那么葡萄酒的运输贸易是无利可图的。

对于美洲殖民地，英国政府要求占有商品供给的垄断权，但是这种垄断权很难维护，因为殖民地居民可以自己运输政府未列举的商品，并从事贸易。不过进口欧洲葡萄酒有些困难，因为英国关税沉重，所以马德拉葡萄酒便在殖民地盛行了。后来规定除了法国葡萄酒，其他葡萄酒出口到殖民地都可以享受退税待遇。但是欧洲和东印度的其他商品出口到殖民地后，旧补助税却不能退还，从而对殖民地不利。

退税制度的本意是鼓励运输贸易，认为运输贸易被认为能带来金银。虽然这个动机很荒谬，但是退税制度本身却合情合理，因为它并不引导资本流向运输贸易，只是防止关税对运输贸易的阻碍，运输贸易也使无法投资于其他领域的资本有了一个发挥作用的空间。此外，退税并不会影响关税收入，因为它鼓励了进出口贸易，增加了进出口总量。只有对于出口到本国垄断地区的商品的退税才会减少关税，因为这些地方的出口额是一定的，与是否征收关税无关。

只有当享受退税待遇的出口商品真正出口到国外时，退税才有效用。而事实上，退税往往被投机倒把之人滥用，从而酿成欺诈事件，于国于民都有害。erchants and manufacturers are not contented with the monopoly of the home market, but desire likewise the most Mextensive foreign sale for their goods. Their country has no jurisdiction in foreign nations, and therefore can seldom procure them any monopoly there.They are generally obliged, therefore, to content themselves with petitioning for certain encouragements to exportation.

Of these encouragements what are called Drawbacks seem to be the most reasonable. To allow the merchant to draw back upon exportation, either the whole or a part of whatever excise or inland duty is imposed upon domestic industry, can never occasion the exportation of a greater quantity of goods than what would have been exported had no duty been imposed.Such encouragements do not tend to turn towards any particular employment a greater share of the capital of the country, than what would go to that employment of its own accord, but only to hinder the duty from driving away any part of that share to other employments.They tend not to overturn that balance which naturally establishes itself among all the various employments of the society；but to hinder it from being overturned by the duty.They tend not to destroy, but to preserve, what it is in most cases advantageous to preserve, the natural division and distribution of labour in the society.

The same thing may be said of the drawbacks upon the reexportation of foreign goods imported；which in Great Britain generally amount to by much the largest part of the duty upon importation. By the second of the rules, annexed to the Act of Parliament, which imposed, what is now called, the old subsidy, every merchant, whether English or alien, was allowed to draw back half that duty upon exportation；the English merchant, provided the exportation took place within twelve months；the alien, provided it took place within nine months.Wines, currants, and wrought silks were the only goods which did not fall within this rule, having other and more advantageous allowances.The duties imposed by this act of Parliament were, at that time, the only duties upon the importation of foreign goods.The term within which this, and all other drawbacks, could be claimed, was afterwards（by 7 Geo.I, chap.21，sect.10.乔治一世第7年第21令的第10条，译注者）extended to three years.

The duties which have been imposed since the old Subsidy, are, the greater part of them, wholly drawn back upon exportation. This general rule, however, is liable to a great number of exceptions, and the doctrine of drawbacks has become a much less simple matter, than it was at their first institution.

Upon the exportation of some foreign goods, of which it was expected that the importation would greatly exceed what was necessary for the home consumption, the whole duties are drawn back, without retaining even half the old Subsidy. Before the revolt of our North American colonies, we had the monopoly of the tobacco of Maryland and Virginia.We imported about ninety-six thousand hogsheads, and the home consumption was not supposed to exceed fourteen thousand.To facilitate the great exportation which was necessary, in order to rid us of the rest, the whole duties were drawn back, provided the exportation took place within three years.

We still have, though not altogether, yet very nearly, the monopoly of the sugars of our West Indian islands. If sugars are exported within a year, therefore, all the duties upon importation are drawn back and if exported within three years, all the duties, except half the old subsidy, which still continues to be retained upon the exportation of the greater part of goods.Though the importation of sugar exceeds, a good deal, what is necessary for the home consumption, the excess is inconsiderable, in comparison of what it used to be in tobacco.

Some goods, the particular objects of the jealousy of our own manufacturers, are prohibited to be imported for home consumption. They may, however, upon paying certain duties, be imported and warehoused for exportation.But upon such exportation, no part of these duties are drawn back.Our manufacturers are unwilling, it seems, that even this restricted importation should be encouraged, and are afraid lest some part of these goods should be stolen out of the warehouse, and thus come into competition with their own.It is under these regulations only that we can import wrought silks, French cambrics and lawns, calicoes painted, printed, stained, or dyed, etc.

We are unwilling even to be the carriers of French goods, and choose rather to forego a profit to ourselves, than to suffer those, whom we consider as our enemies, to make any profit by our means. Not only half the old subsidy, but the second twenty-five per cent.is retained upon the exportation of all French goods.

By the fourth of the rules annexed to the old subsidy, the drawback allowed upon the exportation of all wines amounted to a great deal more than half the duties which were, at that time, paid upon their importation；and it seems, at that time, to have been the object of the legislature to give somewhat more than ordinary encouragement to the carrying trade in wine. Several of the other duties too, which were imposed, either at the same time, or subsequent to the old subsidy；what is called the additional duty, the new subsidy, the one-third and two-thirds subsidies, the impost 1692，the coinage on wine, were allowed to be wholly drawn back upon exportation.All those duties, however, except the additional duty and impost 1692，being paid down in ready money, upon importation, the interest of so large a sum occasioned an expense, which made it unreasonable to expect any profitable carrying trade in this article.Only a part, therefore, of the duty called the impost on wine, and no part of the twenty-five pounds the ton upon French wines, or of the duties imposed in 1745，in 1763，and in 1778，were allowed to be drawn back upon exportation.The two imposts of five per cent.，imposed in 1779 and 1781，upon all the former duties of customs, being allowed to be wholly drawn back upon the exportation of all other goods, were likewise allowed to be drawn back upon that of wine.The last duty that has been particularly imposed upon wine, that of 1780，is allowed to be wholly drawn back, an indulgence which, when so many heavy duties are retained, most probably could never occasion the exportation of a single ton of wine.These rules take place with regard to all places of lawful exportation, except the British colonies in America.

The 15th Charles Ⅱ. Chap.7.called an act for the encouragement of trade, had given Great Britain the monopoly of supplying the colonies with all the commodities of the growth or manufacture of Europe；and consequently with wines.In a country of so extensive a coast as our North American and West Indian colonies, where our authority was always so very slender, and where the inhabitants were allowed to carry out, in their own ships, their non-enumerated commodities, at first, to all parts of Europe, and afterwards, to all parts of Europe South of Cape Finisterre, it is not very probable that this monopoly could ever be much respected；and they probably, at all times, found means of bringing back some cargo from the countries to which they were allowed to carry out one.They seem, however, to have found some difficulty in importing European wines from the places of their growth, and they could not well import them from Great Britain, where they were loaded with many heavy duties, of which a considerable part was not drawn back upon exportation.Maderia wine, not being a European commodity, could be imported directly into America and the West Indies, countries which, in all their non-enumerated commodities, enjoyed a free trade to the island of Maderia.These circumstances had probably introduced that general taste for Maderia wine, which our officers found established in all our colonies at the commencement of the war which began in 1755，and which they brought back with them to the mother-country, where that wine had not been much in fashion before.Upon the conclusion of that war, in 1763（by the 4th Geo.Ⅲ.Chap.15.Sect.12.），all the duties, except 3l 10s.were allowed to be drawn back upon the exportation to the colonies of all wines, except French wines, to the commerce and consumption of which national prejudice would allow no sort of encouragement.The period between the granting of this indulgence and the revolt of our North American colonies was probably too short to admit of any considerable change in the customs of those countries.

The same act, which, in the drawback upon all wines, except French wines, thus favoured the colonies so much more than other countries；in those, upon the greater part of other commodities, favoured them much less. Upon the exportation of the greater part of commodities to other countries, half the old subsidy was drawn back.But this law enacted, that no part of that duty should be drawn back upon the exportation to the colonies of any commodities, of the growth or manufacture either of Europe or the East Indies, except wines, white calicoes and muslins.

Drawbacks were, perhaps, originally granted for the encouragement of the carrying trade, which, as the freight of the ships is frequently paid by foreigners in money, was supposed to be peculiarly fitted for bringing gold and silver into the country. But though the carrying trade certainly deserves no peculiar encouragement, though the motive of the institution was, perhaps, abundantly foolish, the institution itself seems reasonable enough.Such drawbacks cannot force into this trade a greater share of the capital of the country than what would have gone to it of its own accord, had there been no duties upon importation.They only prevent its being excluded altogether by those duties.The carrying trade, though it deserves no preference, ought not to be precluded, but to be left free like all other trades.It is a necessary resource for those capitals which cannot find employment either in the agriculture or in the manufactures of the country, either in its home trade or in its foreign trade of consumption.

The revenue of the customs, instead of suffering, profits from such drawbacks, by that part of the duty which is retained. If the whole duties had been retained, the foreign goods upon which they are paid, could seldom have been exported, nor consequently imported, for want of a market.The duties, therefore, of which a part is retained, would never have been paid.

These reasons seem sufficiently to justify drawbacks, and would justify them, though the whole duties, whether upon the produce of domestic industry, or upon foreign goods, were always drawn back upon exportation. The revenue of excise would in this case, indeed, suffer a little, and that of the customs a good deal more；but the natural balance of industry, the natural division and distribution of labour, which is always more or less disturbed by such duties, would be more nearly re-established by such a regulation.

These reasons, however, will justify drawbacks only upon exporting goods to those countries which are altogether foreign and independent, not to those in which our merchants and manufacturers enjoy a monopoly. A drawback, for example, upon the exportation of European goods to our American colonies, will not always occasion a greater exportation than what would have taken place without it.By means of the monopoly which our merchants and manufacturers enjoy there, the same quantity might frequently, perhaps, be sent thither, though the whole duties were retained.The drawback, therefore, may frequently be pure loss to the revenue of excise and customs, without altering the state of the trade, or rendering it in any respect more extensive.How far such drawbacks can be justified, as a proper encouragement to the industry of our colonies, or how far it is advantageous to the mother-country, that they should be exempted from taxes which are paid by all the rest of their fellow-subjects, will appear hereafter when I come to treat of colonies.

Drawbacks, however, it must always be understood, are useful only in those cases in which the goods for the exportation of which they are given, are really exported to some foreign country；and not clandestinely remported into our own. That some drawbacks, particularly those upon tobacco, have frequently been abused in this manner, and have given occasion to many frauds equally hurtful both to the revenue and to the fair trader, is well known.第五章　论奖金　Chapter Ⅴ　Of Bounties导读

一些人要求政府发放出口奖金，从而使本国商品能够在国外市场上以低廉的价格进行竞争。这种做法得到重商学派的提倡，他们认为可以以此来制造贸易顺差。还有人认为奖金应该提供给只能靠奖金扶持的部门。但是，这些部门就像“扶不起的阿斗”，如果不补偿这些部门损失，资本就可以流向其他更有利可图的部门，而如今，有了奖金鼓励，这些亏损部门继续存在，只能消耗全国资本，从而使一国贸易转向不利。

查尔斯·史密斯认为，设立谷物出口奖金以来，出口谷物的价格超过了进口谷物的价格，并且差额要超过发放的奖金额，因此，他推断出奖金是有利的，但是，他未将农民种植的资本计算在内。如果谷物出口价格不能补偿资本和奖金，那么就亏损了。

又有人认为，设立奖金以来，谷物价格明显下降。但是，法国没有奖金也出现了谷物价格下降的情况，可见这与发放奖金无关，而与白银的真实价值上升有关。甚至，由于奖金鼓励在丰年出口，从而阻止了谷物价格的下调，在歉年又无余粮可以补偿，从而抬高了谷物的价格，因此，奖金终归使谷物价格偏高。

还有人认为，奖金毕竟开拓了国外市场，使谷物销售的价格提高，有利于鼓励耕作，提高谷物产量。但是，国外市场的开拓是以牺牲国内市场为代价的，因为，谷物奖金使国民不仅要承担发放奖金所需的税收，还要承担国内谷物价格上涨所带来的负担，最终会限制国内市场的扩大。

并且，奖金也没有给农民带来实际利益。农民虽然从价格中得到了部分利益，但是谷物价格上涨相当于降低了白银的价值，提高了劳动力的货币价格，还提升了一切农业初级产品和一切制成品原料的货币价格，这使得农民和地主获得的利益被冲抵，终归不会对他们的生活有多大的改善。

ounties upon exportation are, in Great Britain, frequently

petitioned for, and sometimes granted to the produce of particular B

branches of domestic industry. By means of them our merchants and manufacturers, it is pretended, will be enabled to sell their goods as cheap, or cheaper than their rivals in the foreign market.A greater quantity, it is said, will thus be exported, and the balance of trade consequently turned more in favour of our own country.We cannot give our workmen a monopoly in the foreign as we have done in the home market.We cannot force foreigners to buy their goods, as we have done our own countrymen.The next best expedient, it has been thought, therefore, is to pay them in buying.It is in this manner that the mercantile system proposes to enrich the whole country, and to put money into all our pockets by means of the balance of trade.

Bounties, it is allowed, ought to be given to those branches of trade only which cannot be carried on without them. But every branch of trade in which the merchant can sell his goods for a price which replaces to him, with the ordinary profits of stock, the whole capital employed in preparing and sending them to market, can be carried on without a bounty.Every such branch is evidently upon a level with all the other branches of trade which are carried on without bounties, and cannot therefore require one more than they.Those trades only require bounties in which the merchant is obliged to sell his goods for a price which does not replace to him his capital, together with the ordinary profit；or in which he is obliged to sell them for less than it really costs him to send them to market.The bounty is given in order to make up this loss, and to encourage him to continue, or perhaps to begin, a trade of which the expense is supposed to be greater than the returns, of which every operation eats up a part of the capital employed in it, and which is of such a nature, that, if all other trades resembled it, there would soon be no capital left in the country.

The trades, it is to be observed, which are carried on by means of bounties, are the only ones which can be carried on between two nations for any considerable time together, in such a manner as that one of them shall always and regularly lose, or sell its goods for less than it really costs to send them to market. But if the bounty did not repay to the merchant what he would otherwise lose upon the price of his goods, his own interest would soon oblige him to employ his stock in another way, or to find out a trade in which the price of the goods would replace to him, with the ordinary profit, the capital employment in sending them to market.The effect of bounties, like that of all the other expedients of the mercantile system, can only be to force the trade of a country into a channel much less advantageous than that in which it would naturally run of its own accord.

The ingenious and well-informed author of the tracts upon the corntrade has shown very clearly, that since the bounty upon the exportation of corn was first established, the price of the corn exported, valued moderately enough, has exceeded that of the corn imported, valued very high, by a much greater sum than the amount of the whole bounties which have been paid during that period. This, he imagines, upon the true principles of the mercantile system, is a clear proof that this forced corn trade is beneficial to the nation；the value of the exportation exceeding that of the importation by a much greater sum than the whole extraordinary expense which the public has been at in order to get it exported.He does not consider that this extraordinary expense, or the bounty, is the smallest part of the expense which the exportation of corn really costs the society.The capital which the farmer employed in raising it, must likewise be taken into the account.Unless the price of the corn when sold in the foreign markets replaces, not only the bounty, but this capital, together with the ordinary profits of stock, the society is a loser by the difference, or the national stock is so much diminished.But the very reason for which it has been thought necessary to grant a bounty, is the supposed insufficiency of the price to do this.

The average price of corn, it has been said, has fallen considerably since the establishment of the bounty. That the average price of corn began to fall somewhat towards the end of the last century, and has continued to do so during the course of the sixty-four first years of the present, I have already endeavoured to show.But this event, supposing it to be as real as I believe it to be, must have happened in spite of the bounty, and cannot possibly have happened in consequence of it.It has happened in France, as well as in England, though in France there was, not only no bounty, but, till 1764，the exportation of corn was subjected to a general prohibition.This gradual fall in the average price of grain, it is probable, therefore, is ultimately owing neither to the one regulation nor to the other, but to that gradual and insensible rise in the real value of silver, which, in the first book in this discourse, I have endeavoured to show has taken place in the general market of Europe, during the course of the present century.It seems to be altogether impossible that the bounty could ever contribute to lower the price of grain.

In years of plenty, it has already been observed, the bounty, by occasioning an extraordinary exportation, necessarily keeps up the price of corn in the home market above what it would naturally fall to. To do so was the avowed purpose of the institution.In years of scarcity, though the bounty is frequently suspended, yet the great exportation which it occasions in years of plenty, must frequently hinder more or less the plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another.Both in years of plenty, and in years of scarcity, therefore, the bounty necessarily tends to raise the money price of corn somewhat higher than it otherwise would be in the home market.

That, in the actual state of tillage, the bounty must necessarily have this tendency, will not, I apprehend, be disputed by any reasonable person. But it has been thought by many people that it tends to encourage tillage, and that in two different ways；first, by opening a more extensive foreign market to the corn of the farmer, it tends, they imagine, to increase the demand for, and consequently the production of that commodity and secondly, by securing to him a better price than he could otherwise expect in the actual state of tillage, it tends, they suppose, to encourage tillage.This double encouragement must, they imagine, in a long period of years, occasion such an increase in the production of corn, as may lower its price in the home market, much more than the bounty can raise it, in the actual state which tillage may, at the end of that period, happen to be in.

I answer, that whatever extension of the foreign market can be occasioned by the bounty, must, in every particular year, be altogether at the expense of the home market；as every bushel of corn which is exported by means of the bounty, and which would not have been exported without the bounty, would have remained in the home market to increase the consumption, and to lower the price of that commodity. The corn bounty, it is to be observed, as well as every other bounty upon exportation, imposes two different taxes upon the people；first, the tax which they are obliged to contribute, in order to pay the bounty；and secondly, the tax which arises from the advanced price of the commodity in the home market, and which, as the whole body of the people are purchasers of corn, must, in this particular commodity, be paid by the whole body of the people.In this particular commodity, therefore, this second tax is by much the heavier of the two.Let us suppose that, taking one year with another, the bounty of five shillings upon the exportation of the quarter of wheat, raises the price of that commodity in the home market only sixpence the bushel, or four shillings the quarter, higher than it otherwise would have been in the actual state of the crop.Even upon this very moderate supposition, the great body of the people, over and above contributing the tax which pays the bounty of five shillings upon every quarter of wheat exported, must pay another of four shillings upon every quarter which they themselves consume.But, according to the very well informed author of the tracts upon the corntrade, the average proportion of the corn exported to that consumed at home, is not more than that of one to thirty-one.For every five shillings, therefore, which they contribute to the payment of the first tax, they must contribute six pounds four shillings to the payment of the second.So very heavy a tax upon the first necessary of life must either reduce the subsistence of the labouring poor, or it must occasion some augmentation in their pecuniary wages, proportionable to that in the pecuniary price of their subsistence.So far as it operates in the one way, it must reduce the ability of the labouring poor to educate and bring up their children, and must, so far, tend to restrain the population of the country.So far as it operates in the other, it must reduce the ability of the employers of the poor, to employ so great a number as they otherwise might do, and must, so far, tend to restrain the industry of the country.The extraordinary exportation of corn, therefore, occasioned by the bounty, not only, in every particular year, diminishes the home, just as much as it extends the foreign market and consumption, but, by restraining the population and industry of the country, its final tendency is to stunt and restrain the gradual extension of the home market；and thereby, in the long run, rather to diminish, than to augment, the whole market and consumption of corn.

This enhancement of the money price of corn, however, it has been thought, by rendering that commodity more profitable to the farmer, must necessarily encourage its production.

I answer, that this might be the case if the effect of the bounty was to raise the real price of corn, or to enable the farmer, with an equal quantity of it, to maintain a greater number of labourers in the same manner, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, that other labourers are commonly maintained in his neighbourhood. But neither the bounty, it is evident, nor any other human institution, can have any such effect.It is not the real, but the nominal price of corn, which can in any considerable degree be affected by the bounty.And though the tax which that institution imposes upon the whole body of the people, may be very burdensome to those who pay it, it is of very little advantage to those who receive it.

The real effect of the bounty is not so much to raise the real value of corn, as to degrade the real value of silver；or to make an equal quantity of it exchange for a smaller quantity, not only of corn, but of all other home-made commodities：for the money price of corn regulates that of all other home-made commodities.

It regulates the money price of labour, which must always be such as to enable the labourer to purchase a quantity of corn sufficient to maintain him and his family either in the liberal, moderate, or scanty manner in which the advancing, stationary or declining circumstances of the society oblige his employers to maintain him.

It regulates the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of land, which, in every period of improvement, must bear a certain proportion to that of corn, though this proportion is different in different periods. It regulates, for example, the money price of grass and hay, of butcher's meat, of horses, and the maintenance of horses, of land carriage consequently, or of the greater part of the inland commerce of the country.

By regulating the money price of all the other parts of the rude produce of land, it regulates that of the materials of almost all manufactures. By regulating the money price of labour, it regulates that of manufacturing art and industry.And by regulating both, it regulates that of the complete manufacture.The money price of labour, and of every thing that is the produce either of land or labour, must necessarily either rise or fall in proportion to the money price of corn.

Though in consequence of the bounty, therefore, the farmer should be enabled to sell his corn for four shillings the bushel instead of three and sixpence, and to pay his landlord a money rent proportionable to this rise in the money price of his produce；yet if, in consequence of this rise in the price of corn, four shillings will purchase no more home-made goods of any other kind than three and sixpence would have done before, neither the circumstances of the farmer, nor those of the landlord, will be much mended by this change. The farmer will not be able to cultivate much better：the landlord will not be able to live much better.In the purchase of foreign commodities this enhancement in the price of corn may give them some little advantage.In that of home-made commodities it can give them none at all.And almost the whole expense of the farmer, and the far greater part even of that of the landlord, is in home-made commodities.

美洲金银的丰盈对世界性的银价下跌的影响其实是无关紧要的，因为所有国家的情况都是如此，并不能改变实际的贫富情况。而某国的银价相对下跌就会对该国产生重要的影响，因为该国的所有商品都将涨价，而外国商品则相对低廉，使得该国的商品处于不利地位。西班牙和葡萄牙便是例证。这两国垄断了金银矿山，并严禁金银向其他欧洲国家流通，从而使两国的银价低于欧洲平均水平，并且金银量大大超过了年产物的价值。这将限制两国农业和制造业的发展，因为外国将以低廉得多的价格向两国提供这些产品。一旦金银禁令放开，两国的金银将大量涌出。

谷物出口奖金所造成的后果类似于西班牙和葡萄牙的金银禁令。奖金使国内的谷物价格调高，而国外的谷物价格则较低。因为谷物的价格能左右其他商品的价格，所以，奖金将降低国内银价，而抬高国外银价。其结果是本国粮食和制造品昂贵，对制造业和农业都无甚好处，而外国不仅能廉价地得到粮食，还能以更有优势的价格出售制造品，获得双重利益。但是本国的谷物商人确实从中渔利了，奖金鼓励了丰年的谷物出口量，由于不能以丰养歉，因此也鼓励了歉年的谷物进口量，从而使谷物商人从中获利。

由此可以看到，谷物奖金对乡绅没有实际利益。乡绅之所有这么做，只是为了模仿制造商。但是谷物和制造品不同，通过垄断国内市场，制造品可以以高价出售，其真实价格也得到提高，从而增加制造商的真实利润；而谷物垄断只是提高谷物的名义价格，并没有抬高真实价格，因为谷物的真实价格乃是由它所能维持的劳动量决定的，谷物名义价格的提高伴随的是所有商品的涨价，所以农民和乡绅的真实利润并没有增加。

因此，出口奖金应该受到反对，这种重商主义的做法使劳动和资本流入利益较小甚至亏损的产业，并且谷物奖金也无法鼓励谷物的生产。hat degradation in the value of silver which is the effect of the fertility of the mines, and which operates equally, or very near Tequally, through the greater part of the commercial world, is a matter of very little consequence to any particular country. The consequent rise of all money prices, though it does not make those who receive them really richer, doesnot make them really poorer.A service of plate becomes really cheaper, and every thing else remains precisely of the same real value as before.

But that degradation in the value of silver which, being the effect either of the peculiar situation, or of the political institutions of a particular country, takes place only in that country, is a matter of very great consequence, which, far from tending to make anybody really richer, tends to make every body really poorer. The rise in the money price of all commodities, which is in this case peculiar to that country, tends to discourage more or less every sort of industry which is carried on within it, and to enable foreign nations, by furnishing almost all sorts of goods for a smaller quantity of silver than its own workmen can afford to do, to undersell them, not only in the foreign, but even in the home market.

It is the peculiar situation of Spain and Portugal as proprietors of the mines, to be the distributors of gold and silver to all the other countries of Europe. Those metals ought naturally, therefore, to be somewhat cheaper in Spain and Portugal than in any other part of Europe.The difference, however, should be no more than the amount of the freight and insurance；and, on account of the great value and small bulk of those metals, their freight is no great matter, and their insurance is the same as that of any other goods of equal value.Spain and Portugal, therefore, could suffer very little from their peculiar situation, if they did not aggravate its disadvantages by their political institutions.

Spain by taxing, and Portugal by prohibiting the exportation of gold and silver, load that exportation with the expense of smuggling, and raise the value of those metals in other countries so much more above what it is in their own, by the whole amount of this expense. When you dam up a stream of water, as soon as the dam is full, as much water must run over the dam-head as if there was no dam at all.The prohibition of exportation cannot detain a greater quantity of gold and silver in Spain and Portugal than what they can afford to employ, than what the annual produce of their land and labour will allow them to employ, in coin, plate, gilding, and other ornaments of gold and silver.When they have got this quantity the dam is full, and the whole stream which flows in afterwards must run over.The annual exportation of gold and silver from Spain and Portugal accordingly is, by all accounts, notwithstanding these restraints, very near equal to the whole annual importation.As the water, however, must always be deeper behind the dam-head than before it, so the quantity of gold and silver which these restraints detain in Spain and Portugal must, in proportion to the annual produce of their land and labour, be greater than what is to be found in other countries.The higher and stronger the dam-head, the greater must be the difference in the depth of water behind and before it.The higher the tax, the higher the penalties with which the prohibition is guarded, the more vigilant and severe the police which looks after the execution of the law, the greater must be the difference in the proportion of gold and silver to the annual produce of the land and labour of Spain and Portugal, and to that of other countries.It is said accordingly to be very considerable, and that you frequently find there a profusion of plate in houses, where there is nothing else which would, in other countries, be thought suitable or correspondent to this sort of magnificence.The cheapness of gold and silver, or what is the samething, the dearness of all commodities, which is the necessary effect of this redundancy of the precious metals, discourages both the agriculture and manufactures of Spain and Portugal, and enables foreign nations to supply them with many sorts of rude, and with almost all sorts of manufactured produce, for a smaller quantity of gold and silver than what they themselves can either raise or make them for at home.The tax and prohibition operate in two different ways.They not only lower very much the value of the precious metals in Spain and Portugal, but by detaining there a certain quantity of those metals which would otherwise flow over other countries, they keep up their value in those other countries somewhat above what it otherwise would be, and thereby give those countries a double advantage in their commerce with Spain and Portugal.Open the flood-gates, and there will presently be less water above, and more below, the dam-head, and it will soon come to a level in both places.Remove the tax and the prohibition, and as the quantity of gold and silver will diminish considerably in Spain and Portugal, so it will increase somewhat in other countries, and the value of those metals, their proportion to the annual produce of land and labour, will soon come to a level, or very near to a level, in all.The loss which Spain and Portugal could sustain by this exportation of their gold and silver would be altogether nominal and imaginary.The nominal value of their goods, and of the annual produce of their land and labour, would fall, and would be expressed or represented by a smaller quantity of silver than before；but their real value would be the same as before, and would be sufficient to maintain, command, and employ, the same quantity of labour.As the nominal value of their goods would fall, the real value of what remained of their gold and silver would rise, and a smaller quantity of those metals would answer all the same purposes of commerce and circulation which had employed a greater quantity before.The gold and silver which would go abroad would not go abroad for nothing, but would bring back an equal value of goods of some kind or another.Those goods too would not be all matters of mere luxury and expense, to be consumed by idle people who produce nothing in return for their consumption.As the real wealth and revenue of idle people would not be augmented by this extraordinary exportation of gold and silver, so neither would their consumption be much augmented by it.Those goods would, probably, the greater part of them, and certainly some part of them, consist in materials, tools, and provisions, for the employment and maintenance of industrious people, who would reproduce, with a profit, the full value of their consumption.A part of the dead stock of the society would thus be turned into active stock, and would put into motion a greater quantity of industry than had been employed before.The annual produce of their land and labour would immediately be augmented a little, and in a few years would, probably, be augmented a great deal；their industry being thus relieved from one of the most oppressive burdens which it at present labours under.

The bounty upon the exportation of corn necessarily operates exactly in the same way as this absurd policy of Spain and Portugal. Whatever be the actual state of tillage, it renders our corn somewhat dearer in the home market than it otherwise would be in that state, and somewhat cheaper in the foreign；and as the average money price of corn regulates more or less that of all other commodities, it lowers the value of silver considerably in the one, and tends to raise it a little in the other.It enables foreigners, the Dutch in particular, not only to eat our corn cheaper than they otherwise could do, but sometimes to eat it cheaper than even our own people can do upon the same occasions；as we are assured by an excellent authority, that of Sir Matthew Decker.It hinders our own workmen from furnishing their goods for so small a quantity of silver as they otherwise might do；and enables the Dutch to furnish their's for a smaller.It tends to render our manufactures somewhat dearer in every market, and their's somewhat cheaper than they otherwise would be, and consequently to give their industry a double advantage over our own.

The bounty, as it raises in the home market, not so much the real, as the nominal price of our corn, as it augments, not the quantity of labour which a certain quantity of corn can maintain and employ, but only the quantity of silver which it will exchange for, it discourages our manufactures, without rendering any considerable service either to our farmers or country gentlemen. It puts, indeed, a little more money into the pockets of both, and it will perhaps be somewhat difficult to persuade the greater part of them that this is not rendering them a very considerable service.But if this money sinks in its value, in the quantity of labour, provisions, and home-made commodities of all different kinds which it is capable of purchasing, as much as it rises in its quantity, the service will be little more than nominal and imaginary.

There is, perhaps, but one set of men in the whole commonwealth to whom the bounty either was or could be essentially serviceable. These were the corn merchants, the exporters and importers of corn.In years of plenty the bounty necessarily occasioned a greater exportation than would otherwise have taken place；and by hindering the plenty of one year from relieving the scarcity of another, it occasioned in years of scarcity a greater importation than would otherwise have been necessary.It increased the business of the corn merchant in both；and in years of scarcity, it not only enabled him to import a greater quantity, but to sell it for a better price, and consequently with a greater profit than he could otherwise have made, if the plenty of one year had not been more or less hindered from relieving the scarcity of another.It is in this set of men, accordingly, that I have observed the greatest zeal for the continuance or renewal of the bounty.

Our country gentlemen, when they imposed the high duties upon the importation of foreign corn, which in times of moderate plenty amount to a prohibition, and when they established the bounty, seem to have imitated the conduct of our manufacturers. By the one institution, they secured to themselves the monopoly of the home market, and by the other they endeavoured to prevent that market from ever being overstocked with their commodity.By both they endeavoured to raise its real value, in the same manner as our manufacturers had, by the like institutions, raised the real value of many different sorts of manufactured goods.They did not perhaps attend to the great and essential difference which nature has established between corn and almost every other sort of goods.When, either by the monopoly of the home market, or by a bounty upon exportation, you enable our woollen or linen manufacturers to sell their goods for somewhat a better price than they otherwise could get for them, you raise, not only the nominal, but the real price of those goods.You render them equivalent to a greater quantity of labour and subsistence, you increase not only the nominal, but the real profit, the real wealth and revenue of those manufacturers, and you enable them either to live better themselves, or to employ a greater quantity of labour in those particular manufactures.You really encourage those manufactures, and direct towards them a greater quantity of the industry of the country, than what would probably go to them of its own accord.But when by the like institutions you raise the nominal or money-price of corn, you do not raise its real value.You do not increase the real wealth, the real revenue either of our farmers or country gentlemen.You do not encourage the growth of corn, because you do not enable them to maintain and employ more labourers in raising it.The nature of things has stamped upon corn a real value which cannot be altered by merely altering its money price.No bounty upon exportation, no monopoly of the home market, can raise that value.The freest competition cannot lower it.Through the world in general that value is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain, and in every particular place it is equal to the quantity of labour which it can maintain in the way, whether liberal, moderate, or scanty, in which labour is commonly maintained in that place.Woollen or linen cloth are not the regulating commodities by which the real value of all other commodities must be finally measured and determined；corn is.The real value of every other commodity is finally measured and determined by the proportion which its average money price bears to the average money price of corn.The real value of corn does not vary with those variations in its average money price, which sometimes occur from one century to another.It is the real value of silver which varies with them.

Bounties upon the exportation of any home-made commodity are liable, first, to that general objection which may be made to all the different expedients of the mercantile system；the objection of forcing some part of the industry of the country into a channel less advantageous than that in which it would run of its own accord：and, secondly, to the particular objection of forcing it, not only into a channel that is less advantageous, but into one that is actually disadvantageous；the trade which cannot be carried on but by means of a bounty being necessarily a losing trade. The bounty upon the exportation of corn is liable to this further objection, that it can in no respect promote the raising of that particular commodity of which it was meant to encourage the production.When our country gentlemen, therefore, demanded the establishment of the bounty, though they acted in imitation of our merchants and manufacturers, they did not act with that complete comprehension of their own interest which commonly directs the conduct of those two other orders of people.They loaded the public revenue with a very considerable expense；they imposed a very heavy tax upon the whole body of the people；but they did not, in any sensible degree, increase the real value of their own commodity；and by lowering somewhat the real value of silver, they discouraged, in some degree, the general industry of the country, and, instead of advancing, retarded more or less the improvement of their own lands, which necessarily depends upon the general industry of the country.

有人认为，鼓励生产的奖金有可能比出口奖金更有效果，因为奖励生产将降低该商品的价格，从而使国民获益。但是重商主义只注重出口，而非生产，因为国内商品的供应充沛并不符合制造商的利益，他们宁愿将过剩部分销往国外，以维持国内商品的价格。

生产奖金也曾经发放过，白鲱鱼奖金更是一个例子，但其效果却与出口奖金差不多，虽然国内资本被用来奖励该行业，但它仍然无法获得一般的盈利，也无助于国家财富的增长。因此，发放这种奖金是毫无意义的，有四点为证。首先，对白鲱鱼渔船的奖金异常丰厚，奖金按船的吨位发放，腌鱼的盐还可以减税，政府在每桶白鲱鱼上的投入可谓不菲。其次，奖金按渔船吨位计算，而与捕鱼量无关。再次，奖金只发给大渔船，而适合苏格兰渔业的小渔船却没有补助，从而遭到打击。最后，奖金不但没有降低白鲱鱼的价格，反而因打击小渔船，使捕捞量降低，价格上涨了。

即便如此，白鲱鱼业的经营者也没有暴富起来。由于政府的鼓励，资本被不谨慎地投入该领域，由于经营不善，很多公司都亏损了。

对于国防所需的制造业，用奖金来进行鼓励是可以理解的；如果一国富裕到无处撒钱，那么大肆发放奖金也是可以理解的。但是，如果情况不是如此，那么就是荒谬的行为了。

有些奖金是针对进口和出口时形态发生改变的商品发放的，其实也是一种退税，这种奖金没有上述弊端。对技艺精湛的工匠发放奖金也能够鼓励技艺和创新，而不会打破行业平衡，因而也是有利的。o encourage the production of any commodity, a bounty upon production, one should imagine, would have a more direct Toperation, than one up on exportation. It would, besides, impose only one tax upon the people, that which they must contribute in order to pay the bounty.Instead of raising, it would tend to lower the price of the commodity in the home market；and thereby, instead of imposing a second tax upon the people, it might, at least in part, repay them for what they had contributed to the first.Bounties upon production, however, have been very rarely granted.The prejudices established by the commercial system have taught us to believe, that national wealth arises more immediately from exportation than from production.It has been more favoured accordingly, as the more immediate means of bringing money into the country.Bounties upon production, it has been said too, have been found by experience more liable to frauds than those upon exportation.How far this is true, I know not.That bounties upon exportation have been abused to many fraudulent purposes, is very well known.But it is not the interest of merchants and manufacturers, the great inventors of all these expedients, that the home market should be overstocked with their goods, an event which a bounty upon production might sometimes occasion.A bounty upon exportation, by enabling them to send abroad the surplus part, and to keep up the price of what remains in the home market, effectually prevents this.Of all the expedients of the mercantile system, accordingly, it is the one of which they are the fondest.I have known the different undertakers of some particular works agree privately among themselves to give a bounty out of their own pockets upon the exportation of a certain proportion of the goods which they dealt in.This expedient succeeded so well, that it more than doubled the price of their goods in the home market, notwithstanding a very considerable increase in the produce.The operation of the bounty upon corn must have been wonderfully different, if it has lowered the money price of that commodity.

Something like a bounty upon production, however, has been granted upon some particular occasions. The tonnage bounties given to the white-herring and whale-fisheries may, perhaps, be considered as somewhat of this nature.They tend directly, it may be supposed, to render the goods cheaper in the home market than they otherwise would be.In other respects their effects, it must be acknowledged, are the same as those of bounties upon exportation.By means of them a part of the capital of the country is employed in bringing goods to market, of which the price does not repay the cost, together with the ordinary profits of stock.

But though the tonnage bounties of those fisheries do not contribute to the opulence of the nation, it may perhaps be thought that they contribute to its defence, by augmenting the number of its sailors and shipping. This, it may be alleged, may sometimes be done by means of such bounties at a much smaller expense, than by keeping up a great standing navy, if I may use such an expression, in the same way as a standing army.

Notwithstanding these favourable allegations, however, the following considerations dispose me to believe, that in granting at least one of these bounties, the legislature has been very grossly imposed upon.

First, the herring buss bounty seems too large.

From the commencement of the winter fishing 1771 to the end of the

winter fishing 1781, the tonnage bounty upon the herring buss fishery has been at thirty shillings the ton. During these eleven years the whole number of barrels caught by the herring buss fishery of Scotland amounted to 378,347.

The herrings caught and cured at sea, are called sea sticks. In order to render them what are called merchantable herrings, it is necessary to repack them with an additional quantity of salt; and in this case, it is reckoned, that three barrels of sea sticks, are usually repacked into two barrels of merchantable herrings.

The number of barrels of merchantable herrings, therefore, caught during these eleven years, will amount only, according to this account, to 252,. During these eleven years the tonnage bounties paid amounted to £155,463l. 11s. or to8s. upon every barrel of sea sticks, and to 12s. upon every barrel of merchantable herrings.

The salt with which these herrings are cured, is sometimes Scotch, and

sometimes foreign salt; both which are delivered free of all excise duty to the fish-curers. The excise duty upon Scotch salt is at present 1s. 6d. that upon foreign salt 10s. the bushel. A barrel of herrings is supposed to require about one bushel and one fourth of a bushel foreign salt. Two bushels are the supposed average of Scotch salt. If the herrings are entered for exportation, no part of this duty is paid up; if entered for home consumption, whether the herrings were cured with foreign or with Scotch salt, only one shilling the barrel is paid up. It was the old Scotch duty upon a bushel of salt, the quantitywhich, at a low estimation, had been supposed necessary for curing a barrel of

herrings. In Scotland, foreign salt is very little used for any other purpose but the curing of fish. But from the 5th April 1771, to the 5th April 1782, the quantity of foreign salt imported amounted to 936,974 bushels, at eighty-four pounds the bushel: the quantity of Scotch salt delivered from the works to the fish-curers, to no more than 168,226, at fifty-six pounds the bushel only. It would appear, therefore, that it is principally foreign salt that is used in the fisheries. Upon every barrel of herrings exported there is, besides, a bounty of 2s. 8d. and more than two-thirds of the buss caught herrings are exported. Put

all these things together, and you will find that, during these eleven years,every barrel of buss caught herrings, cured with Scotch salt when exported, has cost government 17s. and when entered for home consumption 14s. and that every barrel cured with foreign salt, when exported, has cost

government 1l. 7s. and when entered for home consumption 1l. 3s. The price of a barrel of good merchantable herrings runs from seventeen and eighteen to four and five and twenty shillings; about a guinea at anaverage.

Secondly, the bounty to the white herring fishery is a tonnage bounty；and is proportioned to the burden of the ship, not to her diligence or success in the fishery；and it has, I am afraid, been too common for vessels to fit out for the sole purpose of catching, not the fish, but the bounty. In the year 1759，when the bounty was at fifty shillings the ton, the whole buss fishery of Scotland brought in only four barrels of sea sticks.In that year each barrel of sea sticks cost government in bounties alone 113l.15s.；each barrel of merchantable herrings 159l.7s.6d.

Thirdly, the mode of fishing for which this tonnage bounty in the white herring fishery has been given（by busses or decked vessels from twenty to eighty tons burthen），seems not so well adapted to the situation of Scotland as to that of Holland；from the practice of which country it appears to have been borrowed. Holland lies at a great distance from the seas to which herrings are known principally to resort；and can, therefore, carry on that fishery only in decked vessels, which can carry water and provisions sufficient for a voyage to a distant sea.But the Hebrides or western islands, the islands of Shetland, and the northern and north-western coasts of Scotland, the countries in whose neighbourhood the herring fishery is principally carried on, are everywhere intersected by arms of the sea, which run up a considerable way into the land, and which, in the language of the country, are called sea-lochs.It is to these sea-lochs that the herrings principally resort during the seasons in which they visit those seas；for the visits of this, and, I am assured, of many other sorts of fish, are not quite regular and constant.A boat fishery, therefore, seems to be the mode of fishing best adapted to the peculiar situation of Scotland：the fishers carrying the herrings on shore, as fast as they are taken, to be either cured or consumed fresh.But the great encouragement which a bounty of thirty shillings the ton gives to the buss fishery, is necessarily a discouragement to the boat fishery；which, having no such bounty, cannot bring its cured fish to market upon the same terms as the buss fishery.The boat fishery, accordingly, which, before the establishment of the buss bounty, was very considerable, and is said have employed a number of seamen, not inferior to what the buss fishery employs at present, is now gone almost entirely to decay.Of the former extent, however, of this now ruined and abandoned fishery, I must acknowledge, that I cannot pretend to speak with much precision.As no bounty was paid upon the outfit of the boat-fishery, no account was taken of it by the officers of the customs or salt duties.

Fourthly, in many parts of Scotland, during certain seasons of the year, herrings make no inconsiderable part of the food of the common people. A bounty, which tended to lower their price in the home market, might contribute a good deal to the relief of a great number of our fellow-subjects, whose circumstances are by no means affluent.But the herring buss bounty contributes to no such good purpose.It has ruined the boat fishery, which is, by far, the best adapted for the supply of the home market, and the additional bounty of 2s.8d.the barrel upon exportation, carries the greater part, more than two thirds, of the produce of the buss fishery abroad.Between thirty and forty years ago, before the establishment of the buss bounty, fifteen shillings the barrel, I have been assured, was the common price of white herrings.Between ten and fifteen years ago, before the boat fishery was entirely ruined, the price is said to have run from seventeen to twenty shillings the barrel.For these last five years, it has, at an average, been at twentyfive shillings the barrel.This high price, however, may have been owing to the real scarcity of the herrings upon the coast of Scotland.I must observe too, that the cask or barrel, which is usually sold with the herrings, and of which the price is included in all the foregoing prices, has, since the commencement of the American war, risen to about double its former price, or from about three shillings to about six shillings.I must likewise observe, that the accounts I have received of the prices of former times have been by no means quite uniform and consistent；and an old man of great accuracy and experience has assured me, that more than fifty years ago, a guinea was the usual price of a barrel of good merchantable herrings；and this, I imagine, may still be looked upon as the average price.All accounts, however, I think, agree, that the price has not been lowered in the home market, in consequence of the buss bounty.

When the undertakers of fisheries, after such liberal bounties have been bestowed upon them, continue to sell their commodity at the same, or even at a higher price than they were accustomed to do before, it might be expected that their profits should be very great；and it is not improbable that those of some individuals may have been so. In general, however, I have every reason to believe, they have been quite otherwise.The usual effect of such bounties is to encourage rash undertakers to adventure in a business which they do not understand, and what they lose by their own negligence and ignorance, more than compensates all that they can gain by the utmost liberality of government.In 1750，by the same act which first gave the bounty of thirty shillings the ton for the encouragement of the white herring fishery（the 23rd George Ⅱ.c.24，乔治二世第23年第24号令，译者注），a joint-stock company was erected, with a capital of five hundred thousand pounds, to which the subscribers（over and above all other encouragements, the tonnage bounty just now mentioned, the exportation bounty of two shillings and eight pence the barrel, the delivery of both British and foreign salt duty free）were, during the space of fourteen years, for every hundred pounds which they subscribed and paid into the stock of the society, entitled to three pounds a year, to be paid by the receiver-general of the customs in equal half-yearly payments.Besides this great company, the residence of whose governor and directors was to be in London, it was declared lawful to erect different fishing-chambers in all the different outports of the kingdom, provided a sum not less than ten thousand pounds was subscribed into the capital of each, to be managed at its own risk, and for its own profit and loss.The same annuity, and the same encouragements of all kinds, were given to the trade of those inferior chambers, as to that of the great company.The subscription of the great company was soon filled up, and several different fishing-chambers were erected in the different outp-orts of the kingdom.In spite of all these encouragements, almost all those different companies, both great and small, lost either the whole, or the greater part of their capitals；scarce a vestige now remains of any of them, and the white herring fishery is now entirely, or almost entirely, carried on by private adventurers.

If any particular manufacture was necessary, indeed, for the defence of the society, it might not always be prudent to depend upon our neighbours for the supply；and if such manufacture could not otherwise be supported at home, it might not be unreasonable that all the other branches of industry should be taxed in order to support it. The bounties upon the exportation of British-made sailcloth and British-made gun-powder, may, perhaps, both be vindicated upon this principle.

But though it can very seldom be reasonable to tax the industry of the great body of the people, in order to support that of some particular class of manufacturers；yet in the wantonness of great prosperity, when the public enjoys a greater revenue than it knows well what to do with, to give such bounties to favourite manufactures, may, perhaps, be as natural, as to incur any other idle expense. In public, as well as in private expenses, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.But there must surely be something more than ordinary absurdity, in continuing such profusion in times of general difficulty and distress.

What is called a bounty is sometimes no more than a drawback, and consequently is not liable to the same objections as what is properly a bounty. The bounty, for example, upon refined sugar exported, may be considered as a drawback of the duties upon the brown and muscovado sugars from which it is made.The bounty upon wrought silk exported, a drawback of the duties upon raw and thrown silk imported.The bounty upon gunpowder exported, a drawback of the duties upon brimstone and saltpetre imported.In the language of the customs those allowances only are called drawbacks, which are given upon goods exported in the same form in which they are imported.When that form has been so altered by manufacture of any kind, as to come under a new denomination, they are called bounties.

Premiums given by the public to artists and manufacturers who excel in their particular occupations, are not liable to the same objections as bounties. By encouraging extraordinary dexterity and ingenuity, they serve to keep up the emulation of the workmen actually employed in those respective occupations, and are not considerable enough to turn towards any one of them a greater share of the capital of the country than what would go to it of its own accord.Their tendency is not to overturn the natural balance of employments, but to render the work which is done in each as perfect and complete as possible.The expense of premiums, besides, is very trifling；that of bounties very great.The bounty upon corn alone has sometimes cost the public in one year more than three hundred thousand pounds.

Bounties are sometimes called premiums, as drawbacks are sometimes called bounties. But we must in all cases attend to the nature of the thing, without paying any regard to the word.关于谷物贸易和谷物法令的离题论述

Digression Concerning the Corn Trade and Corn Laws

下面将进一步分析谷物奖金的不当性。

首先要了解，谷物贸易分为四个部门：国内贸易、供国内消费的进口贸易、供国外消费的国内商品出口贸易、运输贸易。 can not conclude this chapter concerning bounties, without observing that the praises which have been bestowed upon the law Iwhich establishes the bounty upon the exportation of corn, and upon that system of regulations which is connected with it, are altogether unmerited. A particular examination of the nature of the corn trade, and of the principal British laws which relate to it.will sufficiently demonstrate the truth of this assertion.The great importance of this subject must justify the length of the digression.

The trade of the corn merchant is composed of four different branches, which, though they may sometimes be all carried on by the same person, are in their own nature four separate and distinct trades. These are, first, the trade of the inland dealer；secondly, that of the merchant importer for home consumption；thirdly, that of the merchant exporter of home produce for foreign consumption；and, fourthly, that of the merchant carrier, or of the importer of corn in order to export it again.第一部分

内地谷物贸易商人和大多数国民的利益应该保持一致，因为只有当供应量和国内消费量相当时，商人才能保证自己的利润，即使他打算借谷物歉收囤积居奇，消费的缩减最终也将使他的利益无法实现。

谷物是一国消费量最大的商品，且生产者和经营者遍布各地，因此它无法产生垄断，从而无法人为操纵谷物价格。所以，近几个世纪的粮食短缺都是因粮食的确实不足造成的，而不是因谷物商人的联盟制造的。

只要允许各地自由贸易，生产谷物的大国就并不会引发大规模的饥荒，因为自然因素造成的歉收只局限于某些地区，可以靠其他地区的粮食输入来度过难关。但是，政府的不当规定，却有可能酿成饥荒。例如，政府命令商人以固定的价格出售谷物，于是，要么商人无法出售，要么人们快速消费，最终都有可能导致真正饥荒的降临。

年景不好时，谷物商人经常成为众矢之的。他们不但不能大赚一笔，反而要面对仇恨和破产。因此，正是在歉收之年，商人们倾向于和农民签订合同以保证谷物的供给，从中赚取利润。谷物商人的利润只是中等水平，而他们往往要面临人们的憎恨。

并且，欧洲的政策也鼓励了这种憎恨。有法令规定禁止转卖谷物，人们似乎认为从农民手中直接购买将是更为便宜的，因此希望取消中间商，但是对于城市的政策则正好相反，禁止制造商直接销售自己的商品。事实上，如果制造商兼营商店，便要付出两种资本，同时希望回收两种利润，最终和由零售商销售无甚区别。对于农民来说也是如此，即使直接出售粮食，他所投入的两个资本也要求两个利润，粮食价格并不会便宜多少。这样做，不仅减缓了资本的分工，还降低了资本的效率，并且，它还使农民不得不分散资本到销售上，从而不利于土地的资本投入和改良。

因此，谷物商对于农民来说是有益的，农民可以将全部资本投入耕作。后来，禁止谷物囤积和转卖的法令得到缓和，例如，查理二世的法令规定小麦不超过一夸脱四十八先令，允许囤积和转卖，于是，谷物贸易又可以自由进行了，但仍然受到限制，因为人们的偏见认为当谷物价格涨到一定水平时，就会引发囤积和垄断，事实上，这种担忧和人们对巫术的担忧一样是无稽之谈。

大部分谷物是在国内市场消费的，谷物的国际贸易只占很少一部分，因此，设立奖金开拓谷物的国际市场事实上是没有必要的。

Ⅰ.The interest of the inland dealer, and that of the great body of the people, how opposite soever they may at first sight appear, are, even in years of the greatest scarcity, exactly the same.It is his interest to raise the price of his corn as high as the real scarcity of the season requires, and it can never be his interest to raise it higher.By raising the price he discourages the consumption, and puts everybody more or less, but particularly the inferior ranks of people, upon thrift and good management.If, by raising it too high, he discourages the consumption so much that the supply of the season is likely to go beyond the consumption of the season, and to last for some time after the next crop begins to come in, he runs the hazard, not only of losing a considerable part of his corn by natural causes, but of being obliged to sell what remains of it for much less than what he might have had for it several months before.If by not raising the price high enough he discourages the consumption so little that the supply of the season is likely to fall short of the consumption of the season, he not only loses a part of the profit which he might otherwise have made, but he exposes the people to suffer before the end of the season, instead of the hardships of a dearth, the dreadful horrors of a famine.It is the interest of the people that their daily, weekly, and monthly consumption, should be proportioned as exactly as possible to the supply of the season.The interest of the inland corn dealer is the same.By supplying them, as nearly as he can judge, in this proportion, he is likely to sell all his corn for the highest price, and with the greatest profit；and his knowledge of the state of the crop, and of his daily, weekly, and monthly sales, enable him to judge, with more or less accuracy, how far they really are supplied in this manner.Without intending the interest of the people, he is necessarily led, by a regard to his own interest, to treat them, even in years of scarcity, pretty much in the same manner as the prudent master of a vessel is sometimes obliged to treat his crew.When he foresees that provisions are likely to run short, he puts them upon short allowance.Though from excess of caution he should sometimes do this without any real necessity, yet all the inconveniences which his crew can thereby suffer are inconsiderable, in comparison of the danger, misery, and ruin, to which they might sometimes be exposed by a less provident conduct.Though from excess of avarice, in the same manner, the inland corn merchant should sometimes raise the price of his corn somewhat higher than the scarcity of the season requires, yet all the inconveniences which the people can suffer from this conduct, which effectually secures them from a famine in the end of the season, are inconsiderable, in comparison of what they might have been exposed to by a more liberal way of dealing in the beginning of it.The corn merchant himself is likely to suffer the most by this excess of avarice；not only from the indignation which it generally excites against him, but, though he should escape the effects of this indignation, from the quantity of corn which it necessarily leaves upon his hands in the end of the season, and which, if the next season happens to prove favourable, he must always sell for a much lower price than he might otherwise have had.

Were it possible, indeed, for one great company of merchants to possess themselves of the whole crop of an extensive country, it, might, perhaps, be their interest to deal with it as the Dutch are said to do with the spiceries of the Moluccas, to destroy or throw away a considerable part of it, in order to keep up the price of the rest. But it is scarce possible, even by the violence of law, to establish such an extensive monopoly with regard to corn；and, wherever the law leaves the trade free, it is of all commodities the least liable to be engrossed or monopolized by the force of a few large capitals, which buy up the greater part of it.Not only its value far exceeds what the capitals of a few private men are capable of purchasing, but supposing they were capable of purchasing it, the manner in which it is produced renders this purchase altogether impracticable.As in every civilised country it is the commodity of which the annual consumption is the greatest, so a greater quantity of industry is annually employed in producing corn than in producing any other commodity.When it first comes from the ground too, it is necessarily divided among a greater number of owners than any other commodity；and these owners can never be collected into one place like a number of independent manufacturers, but are necessarily scattered through all the different corners of the country.These first owners either immediately supply the consumers in their own neighbourhood, or they supply other inland dealers who supply those consumers.The inland dealers in corn, therefore, including both the farmer and the baker, are necessarily more numerous than the dealers in any other commodity, and their dispersed situation renders it altogether impossible for them to enter into any general combination.If in a year of scarcity therefore, any, of them should find that he had a good deal more corn upon hand than, at the current price；he could hope to dispose of before the end of the season, he would never think of keeping up this price to his own loss, and to the sole benefit of his rivals and competitors, but would immediately lower it, in order to get rid of his corn before the new crop began to come in.The same motives, the same interests, which would thus regulate the conduct of any one dealer, would regulate that of every other, and oblige them all in general to sell their corn at the price which, according to the best of their judgment, was most suitable to the scarcity or plenty of the season.

Whoever examines, with attention, the history of the dearths and famines which have afflicted any part of Europe, during either the course of the present or that of the two preceding centuries, of several of which we have pretty exact accounts, will find, I believe, that a dearth never has arisen from any combination among the inland dealers in corn, nor from any other cause but a real scarcity, occasioned sometimes, perhaps, and in some particular places, by the waste of war, but in by far the greatest number of cases, by the fault of the seasons；and that a famine has never arisen from any other cause but the violence of government attempting, by improper means, to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth.

In an extensive corn country, between all the different parts of which there is a free commerce and communication, the scarcity occasioned by the most unfavourable seasons can never be so great as to produce a famine；and the scantiest crop, if managed with frugality and economy, will maintain, through the year, the same number of people that are commonly fed on a more affluent manner by one of moderate plenty. The seasons most unfavourable to the crop are those of excessive drought or excessive rain.But, as corn grows equally upon high and low lands, upon grounds that are disposed to be too wet, and upon those that are disposed to be too dry, either the drought or the rain which is hurtful to one part of the country is favourable to another；and though both in the wet and in the dry season the crop is a good deal less than in one more properly tempered, yet in both what is lost in one part of the country is in some measure compensated by what is gained in the other.In rice countries, where the crop not only requires a very moist soil, but where in a certain period of its growing it must be laid under water, the effects of a drought are much more dismal.Even in such countries, however, the drought is, perhaps, scarce ever so universal, as necessarily to occasion a famine, if the government would allow a free trade.The drought in Bengal, a few years ago, might probably have occasioned a very great dearth.Some improper regulations, some injudicious restraints imposed by the servants of the East India Company upon the rice trade, contributed, perhaps, to turn that dearth into a famine.

When the government, in order to remedy the inconveniences of a dearth, orders all the dealers to sell their corn at what it supposes a reasonable price, it either hinders them from bringing it to market, which may sometimes produce a famine even in the beginning of the season；or if they bring it thither, it enables the people, and thereby encourages them to consume it so fast, as must necessarily produce a famine before the end of the season. The unlimited, unrestrained freedom of the corn trade, as it is the only effectual preventative of the miseries of a famine, so it is the best palliative of the inconveniences of a dearth；for the inconveniences of a real scarcity cannot be remedied；they can only be palliated.No trade deserves more the full protection of the law, and no trade requires it so much；because no trade is so much exposed to popular odium.

In years of scarcity, the inferior ranks of people impute their distress to the avarice of the corn merchant, who becomes the object of their hatred and indignation. Instead of making profit upon such occasions, therefore, he is often in danger of being utterly ruined, and of having his magazines plundered and destroyed by their violence.It is in years of scarcity, however, when prices are high, that the corn merchant expects to make his principal profit.He is generally in contract with some farmers to furnish him for a certain number of years with a certain quantity of corn at a certain price.This contract price is settled according to what is supposed to be the moderate and reasonable, that is, the ordinary or average price, which, before the late years of scarcity, was commonly about eight-and-twenty shillings for the quarter of wheat, and for that of other grain in proportion.In years of scarcity, therefore, the corn merchant buys a great part of his corn for the ordinary price, and sells it for a much higher.That this extraordinary profit, however, is no more than sufficient to put his trade upon a fair level with other trades, and to compensate the many losses which he sustains upon other occasions, both from the perishable nature of the commodity itself, and from the frequent and unforeseen fluctuations of its price, seems evident enough, from this single circumstance, that great fortunes are as seldom made in this as in any other trade.The popular odium, however, which attends it in years of scarcity, the only years in which it can be very profitable, renders people of character and fortune averse to enter into it.It is abandoned to an inferior set of dealers；and millers, bakers, mealmen, and meal factors, together with a number of wretched hucksters, are almost the only middle people that, in the home market, come between the grower and the consumer.

The ancient policy of Europe, instead of discountenancing this popular odium against a trade so beneficial to the public, seems, on the contrary, to have authorized and encouraged it.

By the 5th and 6th of Edward Ⅵ. c.14.it was enacted, that whoever should buy any corn or grain with intent to sell it again, should be reputed an unlawful engrosser, and should, for the first fault suffer two months imprisonment, and forfeit the value of the corn；for the second, suffer six months imprisonment, and forfeit double the value；and for the third, be set in the pillory, suffer imprisonment during the king's pleasure, and forfeit all his goods and chattels.The ancient policy of most other parts of Europe was no better than that of England.

Our ancestors seem to have imagined that the people would buy their corn cheaper of the farmer than of the corn merchant, who, they were afraid, would require, over and above the price which he paid to the farmer, an exorbitant profit to himself. They endeavoured, therefore, to annihilate his trade altogether.They even endeavoured to hinder as much as possible any middle man of any kind from coming in between the grower and the consumer；and this was the meaning of the many restraints which they imposed upon the trade of those whom they called kidders or carriers of corn, a trade which nobody was allowed to exercise without a licence ascertaining his qualifications as a man of probity and fair dealing.The authority of three justices of the peace was, by the statute of Edward Ⅵ.necessary, in order to grant this licence.But even this restraint was afterwards thought insufficient, and by a statute of Elizabeth, the privilege of granting it was confined to the quarter sessions.

The ancient policy of Europe endeavoured in this manner to regulate agriculture, the great trade of the country, by maxims quite different from those which it established with regard to manufactures, the great trade of the towns. By leaving the farmer no other customers but either the consumers or their immediate factors, the kidders and carriers of corn, it endeavoured to force him to exercise the trade, not only of a farmer, but of a corn merchant or corn retailer.On the contrary, it in many cases prohibited the manufacturer from exercising the trade of a shopkeeper, or from selling his own goods by retail.It meant by the one law to promote the general interest of the country, or to render corn cheap, without, perhaps, its being well understood how this was to be done.By the other it meant to promote that of a particular order of men, the shopkeepers, who would be so much undersold by the manufacturer, it was supposed, that their trade would be ruined if he was allowed to retail at all.

The manufacturer, however, though he had been allowed to keep a shop, and to sell his own goods by retail, could not have undersold the common shopkeeper. Whatever part of his capital he might have placed in his shop, he must have withdrawn it from his manufacture.In order to carry on his business on a level with that of other people, as he must have had the profit of a manufacturer on the one part, so he must have had that of a shopkeeper upon the other.Let us suppose, for example, that in the particular town where he lived, ten per cent was the ordinary profit both of manufacturing and shopkeeping stock；he must in this case have charged upon every piece of his own goods which he sold in his shop, a profit of twenty per cent.When he carried them from his workhouse to his shop, he must have valued them at the price for which he could have sold them to a dealer or shopkeeper, who would have bought them by wholesale.If he valued them lower, he lost a part of the profit of his manufacturing capital.When again he sold them from his shop, unless he got the same price at which a shopkeeper would have sold them, he lost a part of the profit of his shopkeeping capital.Though he might appear, therefore, to make a double profit upon the same piece of goods, yet as these goods made successively a part of two distinct capitals, he made but a single profit upon the whole capital employed about them；and if he made less than his profit, he was a loser, or did not employ his whole capital with the same advantage as the greater part of his neighbours.

What the manufacturer was prohibited to do, the farmer was in some measure enjoined to do；to divide his capital between two different employments；to keep one part of it in his granaries and stack yard, for supplying the occasional demands of the market；and to employ the other in the cultivation of his land. But as he could not afford to employ the latter for less than the ordinary profits of farming stock, so he could as little afford to employ the former for less than the ordinary profits of mercantile stock.Whether the stock which really carried on the business of the corn merchant belonged to the person who was called a farmer, or to the person who was called a corn merchant, an equal profit was in both cases requisite, in order to indemnify its owner for employing it in this manner；in order to put his business upon a level with other trades, and in order to hinder him from having an interest to change it as soon as possible for some other.The farmer, therefore, who was thus forced to exercise the trade of a corn merchant, could not afford to sell his corn cheaper than any other corn merchant would have been obliged to do in the case of a free competition.

The dealer who can employ his whole stock in one single branch of business has an advantage of the same kind with the workman who can employ his whole labour in one single operation. As the latter acquires a dexterity which enables him, with the same two hands, to perform a much greater quantity of work；so the former acquires so easy and ready a method of transacting his business, of buying and disposing of his goods, that with the same capital he can transact a much greater quantity of business.As the one can commonly afford his work a good deal cheaper, so the other can commonly afford his goods somewhat cheaper than if his stock and attention were both employed about a greater variety of objects.The greater part of manufacturers could not afford to retail their own goods so cheap as a vigilant and active shopkeeper, whose sole business it was to buy them at wholesale, and to retail them again.The greater part of farmers could still less afford to retail their own corn, to supply the inhabitants of a town, at perhaps four or five miles distance from the greater part of them, so cheap as a vigilant and active corn merchant, whose sole business it was to purchase corn by wholesale, to collect it into a great magazine, and to retail it again.

The law which prohibited the manufacturer from exercising the trade of a shopkeeper, endeavoured to force this division in the employment of stock to go on faster than it might otherwise have done. The law which obliged the farmer to exercise the trade of a corn merchant, endeavoured to hinder it from going on so fast.Both laws were evident violations of natural liberty, and therefore unjust；and they were both too as impolitic as they were unjust.It is the interest of every society, that things of this kind should never either be forced or obstructed.The man who employs either his labour or his stock in a greater variety of ways than his situation renders necessary, can never hurt his neighbour by underselling him.He may hurt himself, and he generally does so.Jack of all trades will never be rich, says the proverb.But the law ought always to trust people with the care of their own interest, as in their local situations they must generally be able to judge better of it than the legislator can do.The law, however, which obliged the farmer to exercise the trade of a corn merchant, was by far the most pernicious of the two.

It obstructed not only that division in the employment of stock which is so advantageous to every society, but it obstructed likewise the improvement and cultivation of the land. By obliging the farmer to carry on two trades instead of one, it forced him to divide his capital into two parts, of which one only could be employed in cultivation.But if he had been at liberty to sell his whole crop to a corn merchant as fast as he could thresh it out, his whole capital might have returned immediately to the land, and have been employed in buying more cattle, and hiring more servants, in order to improve and cultivate it better.But by being obliged to sell his corn by retail, he was obliged to keep a great part of his capital in his granaries and stack yard through the year, and could not, therefore, cultivate so well as with the same capital he might otherwise have done.This law, therefore, necessarily obstructed the improvement of the land, and, instead of tending to render corn cheaper, must have tended to render it scarcer, and therefore dearer, than it would otherwise have been.

After the business of the farmer, that of the corn merchant is in reality the trade which, if properly protected and encouraged, would contribute the most to the raising of corn. It would support the trade of the farmer, in the same manner as the trade of the wholesale dealer supports that of the manufacturer.

The wholesale dealer, by affording a ready market to the manufacturer, by taking his goods off his hand as fast as he can make them, and by something even advancing their price to him before he has made them, enables him to keep his whole capital, and sometimes even more than his whole capital, constantly employed in manufacturing, and consequently to manufacture a much greater quantity of goods than if he was obliged to dispose of them himself to the immediate consumers, or even to the retailers. As the capital of the wholesale merchant too is generally sufficient to replace that of many manufacturers, this intercourse between him and them interests the owner of a large capital to support the owners of a great number of small ones, and to assist them in those losses and misfortunes which might otherwise prove ruinous to them.

An intercourse of the same kind universally established between the farmers and the corn merchants, would be attended with effects equally beneficial to the farmers. They would be enabled to keep their whole capitals, and even more than their whole capitals, constantly employed in cultivation.In case of any of those accidents, to which no trade is more liable than theirs, they would find in their ordinary customer, the wealthy corn merchant, a person who had both an interest to support them, and the ability to do it, and they would not, as at present, be entirely dependent upon the forbearance of their landlord, or the mercy of his steward.Were it possible, as perhaps it is not, to establish this intercourse universally, and all at once, were it possible to turn all at once the whole farming stock of the kingdom to its proper business, the cultivation of land, withdrawing it from every other employment into which any part of it may be at present diverted, and were it possible, in order to support and assist upon occasion the operations of this great stock, to provide all at once another stock almost equally great, it is not perhaps very easy to imagine how great, how extensive, and how sudden would be the improvement which this change of circumstances would alone produce upon the whole face of the country.

The statute of Edward Ⅵ.，therefore, by prohibiting as much as possible any middle man from coming between the grower and the consumer, endeavoured to annihilate a trade, of which the free exercise is not only the best palliative of the inconveniences of a dearth, but the best preventative of that calamity：after the trade of the farmer, no trade contributing so much to the growing of corn as that of the corn merchant.

The rigour of this law was afterwards softened by several subsequent statutes, which successively permitted the engrossing of corn when the price of wheat should not exceed twenty, twenty-four, thirty-two, and forty shillings the quarter. At last, by the 15th of Charles Ⅱ, c.7，the engrossing or buying of corn in order to sell it again, as long as the price of wheat did not exceed forty-eight shillings the quarter, and that of other grain in proportion, was declared lawful to all persons not being forestallers, that is, not selling again in the same market within three months.All the freedom which the trade of the inland corn dealer has ever yet enjoyed, was bestowed upon it by this statute.The statute of the 12th of the present king, which repeals almost all the other ancient laws against engrossers and forestallers, does not repeal the restrictions of this particular statute, which therefore still continue in force.

This statute, however, authorizes in some measure two very absurd popular prejudices.

First, it supposes that when the price of wheat has risen so high as forty-eight shillings the quarter, and that of other grains in proportion, corn is likely to be so engrossed as to hurt the people. But from what has been already said, it seems evident enough that corn can at no price be so engrossed by the inland dealers as to hurt the people：and forty eight shillings the quarter, besides, though it may be considered as a very high price, yet in years of scarcity it is a price which frequently takes place immediately after harvest, when scarce any part of the new crop can be sold off, and when it is impossible even for ignorance to suppose that any part of it can be so engrossed as to hurt the people.

Secondly, it supposes that there is a certain price at which corn is likely to be forestalled, that is, bought up in order to be sold again soon after in the same market, so as to hurt the people. But if a merchant ever buys up corn, either going to a particular market or in a particular market, in order to sell it again soon after in the same market, it must be because he judges that the market cannot be so liberally supplied through the whole season as upon that particular occasion, and that

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