can partake only as far as they let her enjoy part of the advantages of which she is deprived. Nations that resist this communication of mutual benefits, are dooming themselves to fruitless privations. To attempt to conquer such difficulties by national industry, is often impossible, and always more expensive, than to acquire the foreign commodities by an interchange of national productions. Commerce preserves to every country her advantage in the kind of industry for which she is peculiarly fit, and allows that industry to be improved by a concentration of capital; whilst the attempt to rival foreign industry in every particular, and to do without foreign produce, weakens and splits its capitals, hurts national industry, impedes its productiveness, stints its growth, and converts its ramifications into as many parasite branches which unprofitably suck the sap of the tree and remain barren twigs."

"Left without rivals, without competition, and abandoned to its own impulse, national industry painfully drags along in the beaten track, it derives no benefit from the progress of general industry, and without having decayed, experiences a fatal decline. Such is the ultimate fate of every nation that disdains foreign commerce, and fancies it can exist without any intercourse with other nations, or at least that deems itself so much the richer as its exterior communications are few, and as it has more internal means to supply its wants. It stops the progress of wealth, condemns itself to everlasting mediocrity, and obstructs the grandeur of its destiny."

"There is however, it must be confessed, one peculiar case in which a nation ought to renounce all intercourse with other nations; this is, when its government is so bad, that it strips it of all means to rival other nations in any production and in any branch of industry whatever. Such a nation is forced to renounce general commerce, otherwise its resources would soon be exhausted, it would become tributary to nations that are better governed, and never could shake off its dependence. Nations smarting under a bad government would labour for those which enjoy a good administration, and the latter would enrich themselves with the sweat of their brows: sad and deplorable result, which teaches the depositaries of the fate of nations the necessity of attentively studying the causes of their prosperity, which is the basis of political power."

"Adam Smith examines how far it may be proper to continue the free importation of certain foreign goods, when the foreign nation restrains, by high duties or prohibitions, the importation of some of our manufactured produce into their country; and he justly decides, that when there is no probabi

lity that retaliation will procure the repeal of such prohibitions, it is a bad method of compensating the injury done to certain classes of our people, to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to almost all classes of the community. Such law would impose a real tax upon the whole country, not in favour of that particular class of workmen who were injured, but of some other class."

In the third chapter of this book, the monetary system is examined, together with the various important questions, arising out of the establishment of a metallic circulating medium. In the course of this discussion, many ideas are thrown out, which have an immediate application, and communicate light, to the great bullion-controversy recently agitated in England. We shall not, however, think of transcribing them, as the public must be surfeited with this topic, so much having been written and said of it, since the publication of the report of the bullion-committee. We should observe that Mr. Ganilh lays great stress upon the abundance of gold and silver, as highly conducive to the progress of wealth. One of his views on this head, is striking, and to us, new.

"When a gold and silver currency is so plentiful that, without being depreciated, it gets within the reach of any individual that chooses to labour, the most careless are stimulated by the desire of getting money, and all redouble their efforts to obtain a quantity equal or superior to what is possessed by their equals. Ornaments of gold and silver, the price of which is neither so low that any one might get them, nor so high as to be exclusively reserved for the rich, form one of the most powerful incitements to labour, because they gratify the vanity of the labouring classes. Every production of industry that is within the reach of the least favoured classes, partakes of this property of gold and silver, and it would not be beneath the care of an enlightened government to turn the efforts of industry to cheap commodities rather than to the expensive frivolities of opulence; the progress of riches would be so much the more rapid, and national wealth would receive a new impulse from individual comforts."

The chapter which follows "On Credit and Banks," is replete with the most interesting and valuable knowledge. It discusses the nature and tendencies of commercial, private, and public credit; the banking system, comprising its history, progress, operations, and varieties, and particularly that of France, under its present modifications. The author confesses that "the theory of banks has never been well understood in France," while he extols the English institutions of this de

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scription, as models of judgment and utility. He is not, however, friendly to a very extensive paper-currency, which he regards as at all times more or less precarious. He declares it to be his opinion that, for any nation, any other than a gold and silver currency, as a basis, is radically defective. In forming this opinion, he has, perhaps, suffered himself to be biassed by the condition of things in this respect, in his own country.

The fifth chapter is engrossed by the problem, so long and vehemently disputed-Whether the home or the foreign trade is most conducive to national wealth? Let us, without further remark, hear our author himself at length, on this question, as it is one in which circumstances give this country a particular interest.

"At first sight the problem appears to offer no difficulties. The most advantageous trade to nations, as to idividuals, must be that which causes the produce of a country to be sold at the highest, and foreign produce to be purchased at the lowest possible price. It seems that it is to this twofold end, that every trade must tend; and that a country has attained its object when that end is accomplished. It is even difficult to conceive that the smallest doubt can be raised on this point, and the question viewed in any other light."

"Indeed, it was long considered in that light only by the most esteemed writers on political economy."

"Were I to collect the opinions of all the writers who have sanctioned, supported, or adopted the system favourable to foreign trade, I should never have done."

"When the produce of national labour is consumed in the country, its consumption is not very active, because, as Montesquieu observes, people of the same climate have nearly the same productions, and find in them none but common and ordinary enjoyments: consumption never goes beyond their wants, because the productions are not capable of exciting their desires, gratifying their sensuality, or flattering their vanity. All that can be wished for of such a consumption is, that it shall regularly absorb the produce of national labour. In such a state of things, it is very fortunate for the nation if its wealth continue stationary, as it is more likely to to be retrograding than progressive."

"When, on the contrary, the produce of national labour is consumed abroad, the returns, which consist of new, various, and more abundant productions, are generally sought after, their consumption is rapid, labour and industry redouble their efforts to procure them, and both private and public wealth make an astonishing progress."

VOL. IV.

2 X

"Moreover, the returns for the exported produce are always more considerable than that produce; that is, the foreign country gives a greater quantity of produce than it receives, and this surplus consequently increases the capital destin d for the support of national wealth. The characteristic of foreign commerce is to offer to all nations the produce which suits them best, and consequently to make them pay dearer for it than what it is worth in the place where it is produced. Hence it follows, that foreign commerce affords every nation sure means of selling dear the produce of its own labour, and purchasing cheap the produce of foreign labour. This phenomenon has been discovered by Adam Smith."

"Between whatever places foreign trade is carried on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits from it. It carries out that surplus part of the produce of their land and labour for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return for it something else for which there is a demand. It gives a value to their superfluities, by exchanging them for something else, which may satisfy a part of their wants and increase their enjoyments. By means of it, the narrowness of the home market does not hinder the division of labour, in any particular branch of art or manufacture, from being carried to the highest perfection. By opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may exceed the home-consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive powers, and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the society."*

"It is not only by procuring a sale to the surplus produce of the labour of a country that foreign trade succeeds in selling dear the home-productions, and purchasing the foreign produce cheap. The same effect would take place, if it were possible for nations to trade with the whole produce of their labour. The produce sold abroad is always higher in price than in the place of its production, and consequently foreign trade always sells dear and buys cheap."

"Lastly, another advantage resulting from foreign trade, which has not been noticed by Adam Smith, is this. It invites all nations to share in the fertility of all soils, in the improvement of every branch of industry, and in the progress of general civilization. The enjoyments of any particular people are no longer limited by the sterility of its climate, by the awkwardness or inexperience of its labourers, nor even by the

• Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. p. 175.

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defects of its political institutions. The fertility of any soil, the improvement of any branch of industry, the goodness of any political institution, become as it were common to all individuals, to all nations, to the whole family of the human race. This sharing in the general abundance banishes poverty from all countries, or at least no nations are left in poverty but those which do not know how to avail themselves of the soil on which they are placed, or whose industry is checked by the carelessness or ignorance of their government."

"That Adam Smith should have thought it more advanta geous for a country to consume the produce of its labour than to sell it abroad, is so much the more surprising, as he teaches the direct contrary when the question is of purchasing abroad."

"It is," he says, "the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoe-maker. The shoe-maker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce whatever else they have occasion for."

"What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarcely be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry."*.

"The general labour of a country does not depend on the celerity or slowness of the returns of commercial capitals; credit supplies their absence; and, provided they bring back a more abundant foreign produce than the national produce exported, national labour loses nothing of its activity and productiveness. Labour is not interested in the quickness of the returns, but in the consumption of its produce; and whenever that consumption experiences no delay, labour preserves all its activity. Commerce always easily replaces the capitals of labour, when it finds a sale for its produce. The credit which it gives to the consumers, affords safe resources to replace the capital of labour. It can negociate the documents of the credit it has given in a thousand ways, and, by discounting its bills, accelerate the return of its capital according to the wants or exigencies of labour."

"National labour therefore is never a sufferer from the * Wealth of Nations, vol. ii. p. 191, 122.