Bounties of this sort form one of the great expe dients by which the Mercantile System undertakes to enrich the country. While by heavy duties, says this system, you restrain the importation of foreign com modities, and encourage by liberal bounties the ex portation of your own, the balance of trade with every other state must necessarily be in your favour. This balance must as necessarily be paid in gold and silver ; and as these metals form the only species of riches worth the coveting, the nation must inevitably grow rich. It is long since the foundations of this system were demonstrated to be in error ; but the fabric it self is, to this hour, incessantly propped by the busy and eager hands of a vigilant self-interest. None but persons of obtuse intellect are, now a-days, blind to the absurdity of its principles ; whilst its pernicious operation is still permitted to gratify a mercantile and manufacturing avarice, at the expense of the general community. Who now main tains the exploded doctrine of a balance of trade, or indulges a childish fancy for gold and silver as the only or principal characteristics of national wealth ? 'Who does not now see that bounties upon exporta tion can have no other effect than, by diverting capi tal to branches of employment which cannot be sup ported without them, to deprive other branches, which require no such aid, of their necessary supply, or to prevent the capital so diverted, from estal•lisning new and independent modes of employment for itself ? And who does not acknowledge, that, besides this ne gative disadvantage, the positive evil of a double tax does not result to the community ; one to pay the bounty, and another in the advanced price of the commodity in the home market, alter part of it has been forced abroad by the bounty ? It is pretended, that new and hazardous manufactures and departments of trade are cherished by this expedient. We should be glad to know any one particular manufacture or branch of trade which could be fairly proved to have derived its maturity front this cause. On the con trary, the very nature or the thing seems to indicate the impossibility of the fact. No expedient could more effectually bribe the indolence and negligence 01 those who were to receive the bounty. Trusting to their profit at all events, in the premium to be paid to them from the public revenue, the inducement to extraordi nary skill and dexterity must be prodigiously lessened. The fact accordingly we believe to be, that when ever the bounty has been withdrawn from any branch of manulac:turc or track', that owed its origin and first progress entirely or mainly to it, langour and decay have been the consequence. We say " entire ly or mainly ;" for where the physical, local, or mo ral circumstances of the country, afforded sufficient encouragement of themselves, the expedient of a bounty was only the more absurd, and could serve only to retard the natural progress to maturity.
Bounties being distinguished as they relate to the defence, and as they relate to the commercial pros perity of the state, a third sort may be regarded as arising from both. This properly forms no new class, but is merely a compound of the elements of the other two. To this class may be referred all the different bounties upon exportation which we have just been considering. All of them, it is said, encourage more or less the extension of our na vigation and shipping. But this effect, if it exist at all beyond what would otherwise have taken place had the export and import trade been left to their na tural balance, exists in so subordinate a degree, and is so little insisted upon in comparison of their other great result, the pretended favourable balance of trade, that they must always be principally viewed as affecting our commercial prosperity. There are, however, bounties of this mixed description, which deserve to be considered as principally affecting the defence of the state. Of this sort are the bounties upon the sail cloth and gunpowder exported. That as much of these commodities would by this time have been manufactured in this country without the encouragement of the bounties as with it, is at least problematical; and our security has at every differ ent point of time been too closely connected with a full and ready supply of them, to have allowed them to depend upon a balance of probabilities.
But by far the most interesting bounty of this mixed character, is that given upon the exportation of grain. Dr Smith condemns it, not only on the prin ciple applicable to all other bounties upon exporta tion, but also on the principle peculiar to itself, that it has little or no tendency to enrich the parties more immediately concerned. Nor, according to him, has it ever had any ehect in extending the quantity of corn grown ; so that it can have no operation in se curing the country against a scarcity, in the event of a war with the grain countries of America or Eu rope. Mr Malthus, on the other hand, maintains, that it not only produces both these effects, but that, unlike other bounties, it occasions an actual reduc tion in the price of grain to the community at large. By arguing upon its principle, he has endeavoured to chew that it must have a tendency to enrich the land proprietor and farmer in a similar manner, and nearly in a like proportion, as other bounties affect the interests of the export merchant and manufacturer ; and, by a statement of facts as well as argument, he asserts its beneficial result, in having greatly extended the til lage and consequent produce of the country, as well as in having considerably reduced the average cur rent prices. The just conclusion appears to us to be, that while, with Dr Smith, its effects on the ge ral society must be regarded as no better, in a com mercial point of view, than those of other bounties on exportation, its political expediency, in having extended the tillage of the country, must, on the other hand, be conceded to Mr Malthus. He is right, we think, in asserting its tendency to enrich the parties more immediately concerned, in the same manner as the bounties upon manufactured commodi ties exported ; but we are far from being convinced of its efficacy in lowering the average prices in the home market. We must not omit to add, that al though this acute and intelligent writer has defended the principle of the corn bounties, he is by no means a friend to this or any of the doctrines of the mer cantile system. " If throughout the commercial world," says Mr Malthus, whose liberal philoso phy has shed a ray of light through the gloom of prejudice which still envelopes his native, as well as its sister, university,—" if throughout the commercial world every kind of trade were perfectly free, one should undoubtedly feel the greatest reluctance in proposing any interruption to such a system of ge neral liberty ; and, indeed, under such circumstances, agriculture would not need peculiar encouragements. But under the present universal prevalence of the commercial system, with all its different expedienfs of encouragement and restraint, it is folly to except from our attention the great manufacture of corn, which supports all the rest. The high duties paid on the importation of foreign manufactures are so direct an encouragement to the manufacturing part of the society, that nothing but some encourage ment of the same kind can place the manufacturers and cultivators of this country on a fair footing. Any system of encouragement, therefore. which might be found necessary for the commerce of grain, would evidently be owing to the prior encouragements which had been given to manufacturers. If all be free, I have nothing to say ; but if we protect and encourage, it seems to be folly not to encourage that production, which, of all others, is the most import ant and valuable." The term bounty, it may further be observed, is, in common speech, sometimes applied to those pre miums which are occasionally given by the govern ment, but more frequently by certain public-spirited societies, for the encouragement of extraordinary ingenuity and skill in particular departments of the arts. But there is little danger of confounding this application of the word with its proper and more important one. The premiums so bestowed are of inconsiderable amount, and can never engage the public attention as a matter of national expenditure. They cannot be regarded as having the least effect in disturbing the natural tendency to a balance in the employment of the general capital. And econo mists are agreed, however opposite the systems they may have adopted, that the money so expended is beneficial to the commonwealth. (J. n.)