Book IV: Chapter 8

CHAPTER VIII.

CONCLUSION OF THE MERCANTILE SYSTEM.

Though the encouragement of exportation, and the discouragement
of importation, are the two great engines by which the mercantile
system proposes to enrich every country, yet, with regard to some
particular commodities, it seems to follow an opposite plan : to
discourage exportation, and to encourage importation. Its
ultimate object, however, it pretends, is always the same, to
enrich the country by an advantageous balance of trade. It
discourages the exportation of the materials of manufacture, and
of the instruments of trade, in order to give our own workmen an
advantage, and to enable them to undersell those of other nations
in all foreign markets; and by restraining, in this manner, the
exportation of a few commodities, of no great price, it proposes
to occasion a much greater and more valuable exportation of
others. It encourages the importation of the materials of
manufacture, in order that our own people may be enabled to work
them up more cheaply, and thereby prevent a greater and more
valuable importation of the manufactured commodities. I do not
observe, at least in our statute book, any encouragement given to
the importation of the instruments of trade. When manufactures
have advanced to a certain pitch of greatness, the fabrication of
the instruments of trade becomes itself the object of agreat
number of very important manufactures. To give any particular
encouragement to the importation of such instruments, would
interfere too much with the interest of those manufactures. Such
importation, therefore, instead of being encouraged, has
frequently been prohibited. Thus the importation of wool cards,
except from Ireland, or when brought in as wreck or prize goods,
was prohibited by the 3rd of Edward IV. ; which prohibition was
renewed by the 39th of Elizabeth, and has been continued and
rendered perpetual by subsequent laws.

The importation of the materials of manufacture has sometimes
been encouraged by an exemption from the duties to which other
goods are subject, and sometimes by bounties.

The importation of sheep's wool from several different countries,
of cotton wool from all countries, of undressed flax, of the
greater part of dyeing drugs, of the greater part of undressed
hides from Ireland, or the British colonies, of seal skins from
the British Greenland fishery, of pig and bar iron from the
British colonies, as well as of several other materials of
manufacture, has been encouraged by an exemption from all duties,
if properly entered at the custom-house. The private interest of
our merchants and manufacturers may, perhaps, have extorted from
the legislature these exemptions, as well as the greater