factures, for other than fiscal purposes, has long since been happily disused and discredited in this country. The Factory Bill, however, just passed, is to a certain extent a revival of exploded and condemned principles-necessitated, perhaps, by the peculiar circumstances of the times, which, keeping the labouring class in an unnatural state of depression, and forcing an extraordinary competition among manufacturers, have led some of the neediest and least conscientious among them to exact from the children they employ a greater amount of labour than is compatible with their health or happiness. In a more natural state of things, which afforded a competent remuneration to the labour of the working class, such interference of the legislature would be unnecessary, and the health of children might be left with safety to the natural guardianship of their parents.

In other countries, the law continues still to meddle injuriously with many processes of manufacture, for purposes of supposed public advantage. The mischief of all such interference was, however, justly exposed in the work of M. Chaptal, Minister of the Interior under Napoleon, published in 1819; and the following passage from that work evinces a creditable acquaintance with the true principles of commercial and financial policy.

"A government that knows its real interests will endeavour to favour production; its wealth is proportioned to the quantity of taxable produce within its reach. It is less by the amount of taxation, than by the mode in which the taxes are levied, that a nation is oppressed. When the materials of industry are taxed, the source of repro

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duction is dried up, and the public prosperity must languish." Imposts should be placed, not on the first necessaries of life, but on superfluities." "To protect property, to facilitate the supply of the materials of industry, to favour production in every shape, is the sum of the duties of government in relation to commerce. By attempting to interfere with the processes of fabrication, to influence the supply of markets, or to regulate commercial transactions, it can only hamper industry, and injure its own interests."*

* Chaptal, De l'Industrie Française, tome xi.,

P. 218.

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CHAPTER XV.

RESTRAINTS ON COMMERCE.

Restrictions on Exchanges. Fallacy of the Arguments against Free Trade.-History of the Protecting System.— Ruinous policy for a Commercial State-Depresses Industry and discourages Production.-Taxation no ground for protection-Nor the absence of reciprocity.—True principle and limits of protection.-Colonial System.—Advantage of Colonial over Foreign Trade.—Real use of Colonies.Should be considered as extensions of cultivable Territory, and the Trade with them assimilated to the Home Trade.Colonization.-Corn Laws.-In principle unjust and impolitic, except to a very limited extent.-Present System.

-Its removal should be preceded by a removal of the restraints on Agriculture.—Absenteeism.-Conclusion.

Of all the faults which have been committed by the legislature of this country, few have proved so injurious to the successful prosecution of the national industry, as the restraints which it has imposed on the freedom of commercial exchanges.

In a former chapter, we endeavoured to exhibit the vast benefits that flow from commerce, through its enabling the inhabitants of every district or country to avail themselves of the advantages they possess of climate, situation, or soil, favourable to the production of particular commodities, for

procuring such other things as they cannot so readily produce at home, at the least possible sacrifice of labour, time, or capital-in one word, at the least cost.

But the benefit thus arising to a people from the satisfaction of its wants at the cheapest possible rate has long been, and still is, stoutly denied. It has been contended that the importation of foreign commodities prevents the employment of so much native industry as would be required to fabricate these goods, or some substitutes for them, at home; and that this injury is in no degree compensated by the comparative cheapness of the foreign commodities to the consumer. This argument rests upon several great, and equally fatal errors.

1. The attention is confined to the effect of the importation of a superior foreign article on those persons in the importing country who are already engaged, or would, but for such importation, engage themselves, in the fabrication of the commodity in question or its substitute. It is altogether overlooked that the importation is only an exchange of some product of home industry for some other of foreign industry; and that to prevent the importation of the one, is to prevent the production and exportation of the other. In fact, it is not the foreigner that produces,' in the English market, foreign silks, gloves, or corn-their real producer is the English manufacturer and trader, who makes and exports cloth, cotton, or hardware, and brings back in exchange for these articles, the gloves, silk, or corn. These things are as certainly produced in the mar

kets of England by the employment of English labour, skill, and capital alone, as if they were raised and fabricated directly upon the surface of this island. Their equivalents must be first produced here, and then exported in exchange for them, or their introduction would be impossible; for certainly foreigners never send us their goods, except in return for an equivalent, and we can of course export nothing which is not the produce of British industry. Every obstacle, therefore, placed in the way of the importation of any foreign article is precisely to the same extent an obstacle to the exportation of an equivalent of British manufacture. And the injury sustained by the consumers of the articles so 'protected,' as it is called, in their higher price or inferior quality, is wholly uncompensated by any advantage whatsoever to any one. The effect of all protecting duties is to diminish the general productiveness of the national industry, by confining it to such employments as are less productive of value than those which, without such interference, would be undertaken.

The reasoning, indeed, on which that interference is grounded directly denies the benefit resulting from the division of labour and exchange of its produce. If true with respect to nations or districts, it must be equally true with respect to individuals. It would go to make every producer fabricate all the articles he consumes, on the ground that it injures him to be supplied with anything fabricated by another party.

2. The mistake has arisen in a great degree from the natural shortsightedness of those who, accustomed, from their own practical' experience, to