Part 32 (1/2)

Besides what is remitted home, those servants of the company expend immense sums in the country, living there in the greatest luxury. [end of page #198]

have been the cradle and the grave of most of those nations that have become rich and powerful by the means of commerce.

Our West India wealth, though derived from a source still more, or at least equally, impure, and though not inferior in amount, is, for several reasons, not the cause of so much envy. It is not confined to a company, and therefore the splendour and ostentation that, in the case of the Asiatic trade, occasion envy, do not exist in that to the American islands.

Our monopoly is by no means so complete, which has a double effect in our favour; for, besides preventing others from envying us so much, it prevents them from condemning us so severely.

The same nations that see, in its full force, the injustice of subjecting the inhabitants of the East, in their own country, in a way that, at the worst, is not very rigorous, join cordially in robbing Africa of its inhabitants, to make them slaves in America, in a way, that, at the best, is very rigorous.

Such are the baneful effects of sordid interest acting on the mind of man! But our business is not here to investigate opinions, but their result; and, in the present instance, we find that to admit partic.i.p.ation in criminality is the only way to avoid envy and offence.

The third cause for envy is likewise wanting. The commerce with the West Indies is but of a recent date, and no nation has ever owed its greatness or decline to that single source. {161} It is not like the Asiatic trade, a sort of hereditary cause of quarrel; a species of heirloom, entailing upon the possessor the envy and enmity of all other nations.

The envy occasioned by the West India trade is farther diminished by the circ.u.mstance that the plantations have been raised with the money of the persons by whom they are possessed; and that if they had no original right to the soil in its barren state, the cultivation at least is owing to their capital and industry.

The most solid and secure portion of our trade is that which con-

{161} France was the nation that, before the revolution, gained the most by this trade; indeed, no nation has, to this date, gained so much as it did.

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sists of our manufactures at home. In those, though we excite envy, we excite no other of the hateful pa.s.sions. Emulation is natural, and admiration is unavoidable, on seeing the vast progress that arts and industry have made in this country; so that England is absolutely considered as the first country in the world for manufactures.

This cause of greatness and wealth operates in a more uniform and durable manner; though, like others, it has its bounds, yet the nature of them is not easily ascertained.

In this there are two things essential,--the procuring a market, and the means of supplying it. We have always yet found the means of supplying every market we have got; but we have not always been able to extend our market so much as it might have been wished.

America and Russia offer new markets, as has already been observed, but, to extend our old markets, we must either reduce the price, improve the quality, or extend the credit, and invention is the only means by which these things can be done; and there is no possibility of knowing where to set bounds to invention, aided by capital and the division of labour. We are, however, not to forget that priority in point of time being one of the causes of a nation's rise, and being of a nature to be destroyed in the course of years, the superiority we enjoy may leave us, as it did other nations in former times.

When a country produces the raw material, and labour is cheap, and the art established, we might suppose the superiority secure; but it is not. The cotton trade was first established in the East Indies, where the material grows, where the labour is not a tenth of the price that it is in England, and the quality of the manufactured article is good; yet machinery and capital have transplanted it to England. But the same machinery may give a superiority, or at least an equality, to some other country; it is, therefore, our business to persevere in encouraging invention, by the means that have hitherto been found so successful.

{162}

{162} The law of patents, and the premiums offered by the Society of Arts, suggest improvements, and reward them when made. To those, to the security of property, and nature of the government, we chiefly owe the great improvements made in England.

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The most necessary thing for our commerce is the support of mercantile credit, without which it is in vain to expect that trade will be carried on to any great amount. In 1772, when a great failure occasioned want of confidence, the exports of the country fell off above three millions, but its imports fell off very little. {163} In 1793, when the internal credit of the mercantile people was staggered, precisely the same effect was produced. These are the only two instances of individual credit being staggered to such a degree, as to prevent mercantile men from putting confidence in each other; and they are the only two instances of any very great falling off in the exports in one year, except during the American war, when the chief branches of trade in the country were cut off or diminished.

The falling off, in exports, in 1803, which was very great indeed, (being no less than one-third of the whole,) was not occasioned by the same cause, but appears to have been owing to three others of a different nature.

First, the French had actually shut us out from a great extent of coast, and this occasioned a diminution of exports, which will, in part, be done away, when new channels of conveyance are found out. It will nevertheless operate in causing some diminution, as circuitous channels render goods more difficult to be introduced, and consequently dearer to the consumers.

The second cause appears to have been, the uncertainty of our merchants where to send the goods, and who to trust, as the fear of the extension of French power took away confidence, and produced a sort of irresolution, which is always hurtful to business.