An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (ebook reader with highlighter txt) 📖

chap. 13,

this penalty is increased, for the first offence, to five hundred

pounds for every artificer so enticed, and to twelve months

imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid ; and for the

second offence, to one thousand pounds, and to two years

imprisonment, and until the fine shall be paid.

 

By the former of these two statutes, upon proof that any person

has been enticing any artificer, or that any artificer has

promised or contracted to go into foreign parts, for the purposes

aforesaid, such artificer may be obliged to give security, at the

discretion of the court, that he shall not go beyond the seas,

and may be committed to prison until he give such security.

 

If any artificer has gone beyond the seas, and is exercising or

teaching his trade in any foreign country, upon warning being

given to him by any of his majesty’s ministers or consuls abroad,

or by one of his majesty’s secretaries of state, for the time

being, if he does not, within six months after such warning,

return into this realm, and from henceforth abide and inhabit

continually within the same, he is from thenceforth declared

incapable of taking any legacy devised to him within this

kingdom, or of being executor or administrator to any person, or

of taking any lands within this kingdom, by descent, devise, or

purchase. He likewise forfeits to the king all his lands, goods,

and chattels; is declared an alien in every respect; and is put

out of the king’s protection.

 

It is unnecessary, I imagine, to observe how contrary such

regulations are to the boasted liberty of the subject, of which

we affect to be so very jealous ; but which, in this case, is so

plainly sacrificed to the futile interests of our merchants and

manufacturers.

 

The laudable motive of all these regulations, is to extend our

own manufactures, not by their own improvement, but by the

depression of those of all our neighbours, and by putting an end,

as much as possible, to the troublesome competition of such

odious and disagreeable rivals. Our master manufacturers think it

reasonable that they themselves should have the monopoly of the

ingenuity of all their countrymen. Though by restraining, in some

trades, the number of apprentices which can be employed at one

time, and by imposing the necessity of a long apprenticeship in

all trades, they endeavour, all of them, to confine the knowledge

of their respective employments to as small a number as possible

; they are unwilling, however, that any part of this small number

should go abroad to instruct foreigners.

 

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production ; and

the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far

as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

 

The maxim is so perfectly self-evident, that it would be absurd

to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system, the

interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that

of the producer ; and it seems to consider production, and not

consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and

commerce.

 

In the restraints upon the importation of all foreign commodities

which can come into competition with those of our own growth or

manufacture, the interest of the home consumer is evidently

sacrificed to that of the producer. It is altogether for the

benefit of the latter, that the former is obliged to pay that

enhancement of price which this monopoly almost always occasions.

 

It is altogether for the benefit of the producer, that bounties

are granted upon the exportation of some of his productions. The

home consumer is obliged to pay, first the tax which is necessary

for paying the bounty ; and, secondly, the still greater tax

which necessarily arises from the enhancement of the price of the

commodity in the home market.

 

By the famous treaty of commerce with Portugal, the consumer is

prevented by duties from purchasing of a neighbouring country, a

commodity which our own climate does not produce ; but is obliged

to purchase it of a distant country, though it is acknowledged,

that the commodity of the distant country is of a worse quality

than that of the near one. The home consumer is obliged to submit

to this inconvenience, in order that the producer may import into

the distant country some of his productions, upon more

advantageous terms than he otherwise would have been allowed to

do. The consumer, too, is obliged to pay whatever enhancement in

the price of those very productions this forced exportation may

occasion in the home market.

 

But in the system of laws which has been established for the

management of our American and West Indian colonies, the interest

of the home consumer has been sacrificed to that of the producer,

with a more extravagant profusion than in all our other

commercial regulations. A great empire has been established for

the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers, who should

be obliged to buy, from the shops of our different producers, all

the goods with which these could supply them. For the sake of

that little enhancement of price which this monopoly might afford

our producers, the home consumers have been burdened with the

whole expense of maintaining and defending that empire. For this

purpose, and for this purpose only, in the two last wars, more

than two hundred millions have been spent, and a new debt of more

than a hundred and seventy millions has been contracted, over and

above all that had been expended for the same purpose in former

wars. The interest of this debt alone is not only greater

than the whole extraordinary profit which, it never could be

pretended, was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than

the whole value of that trade, or than the whole value of the

goods which, at an average, have been annually exported to the

colonies.

 

It cannot be very difficult to determine who have been the

contrivers of this whole mercantile system; not the consumers, we

may believe, whose interest has been entirely neglected; but the

producers, whose interest has been so carefully attended to ; and

among this latter class, our merchants and manufacturers have

been by far the principal architects. In the mercantile

regulations which have been taken notice of in this chapter, the

interest of our manufacturers has been most peculiarly attended

to; and the interest, not so much of the consumers, as that of

some other sets of producers, has been sacrificed to it.

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

OF THE AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS, OR OF THOSE SYSTEMS OF POLITICAL

ECONOMY WHICH REPRESENT THE PRODUCE OF LAND, AS EITHER THE SOLE

OR THE PRINCIPAL SOURCE OF THE REVENUE AND WEALTH OF EVERY

COUNTRY.

 

The agricultural systems of political economy will not require so

long an explanation as that which I have thought it necessary to

bestow upon the mercantile or commercial system.

 

That system which represents the produce of land as the sole

source of the revenue and wealth of every country, has so far as

I know, never been adopted by any nation, and it at present

exists only in the speculations of a few men of great learning

and ingenuity in France. It would not, surely, be worth while to

examine at great length the errors of a system which never has

done, and probably never will do, any harm in any part of the

world. I shall endeavour to explain, however, as distinctly as I

can, the great outlines of this very ingenious system.

 

Mr. Colbert, the famous minister of Lewis XIV. was a man of

probity, of great industry, and knowledge of detail ; of great

experience and acuteness in the examination of public accounts;

and of abilities, in short, every way fitted for introducing

method and good order into the collection and expendture of the

public revenue. That minister had unfortunately embraced all the

prejudices of the mercantile system, in its nature and essence a

system of restraint and regulation, and such as could scarce fail

to be agreeable to a laborious and plodding man of business, who

had been accustomed to regulate the different departments of

public offices, and to establish the necessary checks and

controlls for confining each to its proper sphere. The industry

and commerce of a great country, he endeavoured to regulate upon

the same model as the departments of a public office ; and

instead of allowing every man to pursue his own interest his own

way, upon the liberal plan of equality, liberty, and justice, he

bestowed upon certain branches of industry extraordinary

privileges, while he laid others under as extraordinary

restraints. He was not only disposed, like other European

ministers, to encourage more the industry of the towns than that

of the country; but, in order to support the industry of the

towns, he was willing even to depress and keep down that of the

country. In order to render provisions cheap to the inhabitants

of the towns, and thereby to encourage manufactures and foreign

commerce, he prohibited altogether the exportation of corn, and

thus excluded the inhabitants of the country from every foreign

market, for by far the most important part of the produce of

their industry. This prohibition, joined to the restraints

imposed by the ancient provincial laws of France upon the

transportation of corn from one province to another, and to the

arbitrary and degading taxes which are levied upon the

cultivators in almost all the provinces, discouraged and kept

down the agriculture of that country very much below the state to

which it would naturally have risen in so very fertile a soil,

and so very happy a climate. This state of discouragement and

depression was felt more or less in every different part of the

country, and many different inquiries were set on foot concerning

the causes of it. One of those causes appeared to be the

preference given, by the institutions of Mr. Colbert, to the

industry of the towns above that of the country.

 

If the rod be bent too much one way, says the proverb, in order

to make it straight, you must bend it as much the other. The

French philosophers, who have proposed the system which

represents agriculture as the sole source of the revenue and

wealth of every country, seem to have adopted this proverbial

maxim; and, as in the plan of Mr. Colbert, the industry of the

towns was certainly overvalued in comparison with that of the

country, so in their system it seems to be as certainly

undervalued.

 

The different orders of people, who have ever been supposed to

contribute in any respect towards the annual produce of the land

and labour of the country, they divide into three classes. The

first is the class of the proprietors of land. The second is the

class of the cultivators, of farmers and country labourers, whom

they honour with the peculiar appellation of the productive

class. The third is the class of artificers, manufacturers, and

merchants, whom they endeavour to degrade by the humiliating

appellation of the barren or unproductive class.

 

The class of proprietors contributes to the annual produce, by

the expense which they may occasionally lay out upon the

improvement of the land, upon the buildings, drains, inclosures,

and other ameliorations, which they may either make or maintain

upon it, and by means of which the cultivators are enabled, with

the same capital, to raise a greater produce, and consequently to

pay a greater rent. This advanced rent may be considered as the

interest or profit due to the proprietor, upon the expense or

capital which be thus employs in the improvement of his land.

Such expenses are in this system called ground expenses (depenses

foncieres).

 

The