第23章

By means of trade and manufactures a greater quantity of subsistence can be annually imported into a country than what its own lands, in the actual state of their cultivation, could afford.The inhabitants of a town, though they frequently possess no lands of their own, yet draw to themselves, by their industry, such a quantity of the rude produce of the lands of other people as supply them, not only with the materials of their work, but with the fund of their subsistence.What a town always is in regard to the country in its neighborhood, one independent state or country may frequently be with regard to other independent states or countries.(23) Commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government's (into Europe) "and with them the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbors, and of servile dependency upon their superiors.(24)"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 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.Among nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known, the sovereign, upon extraordinary occasions, can seldom draw any considerable aid from his subjects.(25) In modem war the great expense of fire arms gives an evident advantage to the nation which can best afford that expense; and, consequently, to an opulent and civilized over a poor and barbarous nation."According to our author, some of these manufactures proceed from the original rude arts of the country cultivated and refined by the gradual progress of capital and of the division of labor; others are introduced from foreign states.This transfer takes place in the following manner.

Trade first, by degrees, introduces a taste for the foreign manufacture;the demand for it increases with time and the opulence of the society.

But when this trade has become so general as to occasion an extensive consumption, the merchants of the country, to save the expense attending the transport of the article from a foreign country, introduce the manufacture of it at home.

In some cases, then, the increase of capital, arising from the accumulation of individuals, and division of labor thence arising, is not, it would appear, sufficient alone to account for the progress of improvement, and consequent production of fresh funds out of which wealth may grow.For, in cases where the raw materials exist, and capital to divide labor and put it in motion also exists, these are sometimes confessedly dependent on the importation of new arts from other countries, for the means of being advantageously directed.These admitted facts are certainly not in accordance with our author's theory.Passing, however, the consideration of this at present, I should wish to direct the reader's attention to the application of his peculiar doctrines to events of this class; and, that I may do so, it is necessary to examine them with somewhat more attention.

When goods are transported from a distance, a great part of their price is made up of the expense, attending the transport.This arises not merely from the simple expense of carriage, but from the risk attending it, from the perils of land and water, and the carelessness or knavery of those who are entrusted with it; from the profits which the different capitalists, through whom they may be transferred, exact, and from the damage to which commodities are subject by being long kept on hand.The price of very many commodities transported from one country to another is doubled by the influence of these causes; not a few of them derive more than three fourths of their value from them.

Hence the transfer of the manufacture of such goods to the countries to which, when manufactured, they were before sent, is very highly advantageous to those countries.It is advantageous from the saving to the national income which it effects by doing away with the expense of transport; from furnishing, according to our author, a new and more profitable employment for capital; and from the general effects it produces on.the national prosperity, as exemplified by him in the passages I have quoted.It must be allowed, however, that this introduction of such manufactures, by the violent operation, as he terms it, of the stocks of particular merchants and undertakers, who establish them in imitation of some foreign manufactures of the same kind, is a matter of great difficulty.

For, in the first place, the materials which the home supply affords will, in all probability, be not altogether similar to those that are used for the same purpose in the foreign country.Some may be better, some worse adapted to the purpose, but they can scarcely be altogether alike.They must vary, too, in their price, some being cheaper, some dearer, than in the country from whence the manufacture is brought.

The greater part of manufactures are also influenced by the climate.

The dryness or moisture of the atmosphere, the degrees of heat and cold, the brightness of the sky and consequent intensity of the light, are circumstances which all, more or less, affect many manufactures.

The proportion between the rates of wages and profits of stock is also very different in different countries, and it considerably influences the determination of what may be the most advantageous mode of conducting any process in any country.