We had always plenty to eat. If all the cotton and tobacco lands are turned into wheat fields, the flour must necessarily spoil on our hands. Nor could we possibly manufacture up all the cottons, which we exported, to the amount of nine millions of dollars per annum, were they within our reach; nor chew and smoke all the tobacco, cook all the fish, turn all our potash into soap and glass, or find possibly any use whatever for the tar, and turpentine of our forests.

Let it not be imagined that we loose nothing, because we do not yet seem to suffer. We slowly consume our past accumulations, while we throw on posterity the cost of our folly. To stop in the career of prosperity, is to retrograde: and a corrected policy, with redoubled exertions, will, for a long time, strive in vain, to attain that eminence of national wealth and power, which, but for our want of wisdom, we might have occupied.

There are many productions with us, as in most other countries, which, where they grow, or are found, have little or no value, but which may be exchanged to great advantage abroad.No body here uses ginseng, but it commands in China commodities, the possession of which is desirable. Our oak-bark is of little use to us, and could hardly be consumed even if all the nation were to dress in yellow; in England it was exchangeable for objects we want. The trimmings of our sheet-iron accumulate in large heaps round our rolling-mills; the Chinese gave us silks for them. The leeches of the ponds round our city-to the amount of 15 to 20,000 per annum, were exported to the West Indies, and made several thousand dollars circulate in this neighbourhood. How is the community to be indemnified for their loss, unless indeed you were to imagine that they ought to be let loose on the redundant blood of our own citizens, to

ence need be incurred by or on account of any citizen employed in the home trade. Go abroad at your own risk: if the profits will pay the insurance, go on: if not, employ yourself and your capital at home. There are manufactures to establish without number; a population to be supplied incessantly calling for your articles; lands to cultivate without limits; employment for money and for people, that centuries will not satisfy. T. C.

It is granted, that the nation gains by exporting articles that yield a profit abroad and none at home. But let us not set up a man of straw, and exult in the victory of demolishing him. The question is not, shall we export useless articles, or keep them at home to spoil and waste-the question is, do we pay too much or not, for the profit they bring? Under what circumstances and conditions can the export be prudently made? T. C.

make them eat more, to replace the waste, and thus to stimulate agricultural industry by an increased demand for food!

There have been exported from new Spain upwards of two thousand millions of silver dollars, since the first discovery of that country, and agriculture flourishes most in the vicinity of the mines.* Of what use to the people would have been all this metallic treasure if not exported?-Cochenille, Jesuits-bark, Vanilla, the most valuable spices, are the spontaneous productions of the countries whence we receive them. A considerable commerce is carried on in Swallow nests from Cochin China to China.t

If some nation had as great a fancy for dried oak leaves as we have for tea, and would give us commodities, on which we set value, in return for them-will any one be so mad as to say, that we should gain nothing by their sale abroad? Would not millions of people derive support and comfort from gathering, and preparing them for the market? The country thickly settled, and other things remaining unchanged, must they not starve, and perish, if their exportation were to cease ?§

* Alexander de Humbold, in the work mentioned before.
† Barrow's Travels to China.

→ Do the Chinese need a foreign trade of merchant ships protected by ships of war, to sell their tea? Can any example be more in point, to shew, that if you possess commodities of value to give in exchange, the merchants of other countries will let you want for nothing? Still I am no advocate for imitating the Chinese. Shew me that your foreign trade, yields a reasonable profit, after all the expences of the merchant are paid, and all the expences of the nation are paid, and then I agree, it is well worth pursuing. If a merchant gain 20 per cent. on his capital, and a farmer gain 20 per cent. on his capital, the consumer not only pays the mercantile profit of 20 per cent, but for the most part of 50 per cent. more to protect the merchant's speculation. T. C.

§ I hardly know how to suggest a stronger argument against the encourages ment of foreign commerce than this suggestion of Dr. Bollman, in favour of it. If manufacturers at home are made absolutely dependant for subsistence, on customers abroad, whom accident, caprice, poverty, competition, war, may strike off-then shall we frequently behold, as of late years in England, famine pervading the land, and thinning the ranks of that class of the community, who might be made the main strength of the nation. In Great Britain, within these six years, at least half a million of wretched manufacturers would have starved, if war had not invited them to the wretched alternative she holds out. The war itself, in which that nation has been involved, has not produced altogether so much evil in other respects, as in making the poor mamanufacturers feel so cruelly, the lot of those whose bread depends upon foreign trade. T. C.

1

If all the West-India islands belonged to one sovereign, and he should, miraculously, happen to be a wise man-can it be for one moment conceived that he would attempt to increase his power, and promote the prosperity, and wealth of his subjects by causing them to raise sugar, coffee, and the other productions, peculiar to those climates, only in sufficient quantity for their own consumption, and to procure sparingly, imperfectly, at a vast expence of labour and time, or totally to forego those enjoyments, and that wealth, which attention to the productions most favoured by their tropical situation, and their unrestrained exportation would procure to them in abundance, and with ease?*

The condition of France cannot be thought to have improved, because she is obliged, in compliance with Napoleon's mandates, to extort from a crop of five acres cultivated in beets, as much indifferent sugar as the wheat of one acre would procure from abroad of an excellent quality.t

We have hardly, in our wealthy country, a sufficient quantity of rags to supply us with paper. But Italy could not consume the paper which her inexhaustible rags, were she to work them up herself, would bring into existence. She exchanges them for West-India produce and hard ware. She does the same with the alum, the sulphur, the puzzolana‡ of her burning mountains.

All my readers probably know, that the current of opinion among the literati of England, and especially of the reviewers, such as the Edinburgh, and the Monthly, is opposed to the prevailing madness for foreign commerce. The Edinburgh Review moreover, conducted with much ability, is generally in opposition to the present politics of the British government. To counteract the effect of the disquisitions in that review, the Quarterly Review was set on foot, as a general defence of the measures of government in church and state. Yet even the Quarterly Review, is struck with the manifold misery of which a dependance on foreign commerce is at one time or other the inevitable cause. I will put in a note to the end of this paper, the extract to which I allude.

No. I am a fixt advocate for raising every thing that can be sold or bartered with profit. I greatly approve of unrestrained exportation. Let the merchant carry what he pleases, where he pleases, at his own risk. If his trade be hazardous, it is his own affair: it is his duty to sit down and count the cost: be has no claim upon the nation to take the hazard upon itself. T. C.

But sugar sells in France for 15 sous. The dollar passes for 108 sous. That is about 7lbs. for a dollar. T. C.

+ The Puzzolana or Terras, is hardly now an article of export: its use is superceded by the admixture of Smithy-slack and the cheap oxyds of iron with mortar. T. C.

Shall those, who are thus supported, be abandoned to misery, that the anticommercial system may flourish?

The agriculture of Sweden is inadequate to the maintain. ance of her people;-shall part of them be driven off, because they cannot learn to digest copper and iron?-must the island of Madeira be evacuated, because no longer permitted to send abroad her forty thousand pipes of wine?-must Geneva become a village, because no longer allowed to supply the world with watches ?*

Due efforts will be attended with the greatest success, when bestowed on that branch of industry for which the country from its physical condition is best calculated. The more this can be ex clusively followed, the greater will be the wealth acquired. It must therefore be the interest of every nation to extend the markets for her staple commodity to the most distant regions.

In the same manner, intellectual and moral acquirements will become productive of greater national benefits, when displayed on the theatre of the world, than confined to the narrow ■phere of domestic concerns. The probity and fairness in dealing, for which it is said, that British manufacturers are distinguished, promises to them no exclusive advantage at home, but insures a preference among foreign customers. Confidence abroad, and the command of foreign funds, are happy results of an impartial execution of the laws. Public faith makes public credit an exportable commodity; and insures to younger nations, a participation of the benefits arising from the large capitals of the old. Banking is not less lucrative and eligible when transacted among nations, than as a business among individuals.-Skill, credit, character, ingenuity, activity, prudence, which lead to fortune in private pursuits, must yield still greater results when nationally pre-eminent in extensive commercial concerns. Correct, and minute information of the wants of mankind in every spot, is of itself, a most powerful engine of wealth, but it can neither be acquired, nor rendered valuable, without a foreign trade.

*It is a great misfortune when the existence of a people depends upon the sale of articles, which their customers can dispense with whenever they please and without inconvenience; and in which, other nations may so easily become competitors. This I have already averted to. T. C.

3. This trade is beneficial because it contributes materially to carry the division of labour, and the introduction of labour-supplying machinery to their greatest extent.*

The object of all labour being the gaining of a subsistence, it cannot be expected that any man should devote himself, exclusively, to any particular branch of industry, unless the demand for the article produced, or raised, be sufficient to insure him a remuneration adequate to his exertions.

In an isolated settlement, consisting of eight or ten families, no one could be a miller, because the trifling demand for flour could not afford him employment, and support. For the same reason such a settlement could not support a shoemaker. The man who should grind the grain, or make the shoes for his neighbours, would at the same time be obliged to follow some other profession, or employ part of his time in farming. Should the growth of the settlement at last allow a man to devote himself exclusively to the working in leather, still he would be obliged to make men's shoes, women's shoes, children's shoes, and boots. In a still more populous community, all those subdivisions of shoemakers would become distinct branches; till finally some hands would make only a particular description of men's, others of women's and children's shoes-even the binding of them' would become a distinct trade, and it is at this period that the public generally, would be supplied with the best shoes, of every description, at the lowest prices.

The same observations apply to every other trade, and pursuit. They also apply to the introduction of machinery.

Most machines perform but one operation. In order to warrant the investment of capital in the construction, or acquisition, of a machine, it is necessary that the performance of that operation should recur sufficiently often to enable the machine to earn the interest of the money it cost, and a profit besides.-A farmer, who cultivates a few acres only, will not think of having a thrashing machine. The consumption of a few plates of sheet iron, of a few nailrods, will not warrant the construction of a rolling and slitting mill.

* Not more from an encreased demand abroad, than from an encreased demand at home. In point of fact, the best finished and more costly manufac. tures-those that incite chiefly to improvements in machinery, are seldom exported. The best woollens, best cottons, the best pottery, the most expensive hardware of the British market, are never seen in this country, which is Britain's best customer. T. C.