The expedients invented by governments to assist their merchants in selling dear, are numerous. Some tend to diminish the number of producers in a market of given' extent, and therefore to force buyers to raise their price ; such are apprenticeships, corporations, monopolies granted to companies, prohibitions to import, exclusive governments of colonies, and favours obtained by treaties of commerce ; others, such as bounties and drawbacks, are destined really to extend the market ; though, by securing to the manufac turers a profit at the government's expense, not the con sumer's.
The regulations of apprenticeships and the statutes of corporations, were destined, it is said, to hinder ignorant workmen from following any trade which they did not yet understand ; they were forced to devote a determinate number of years to learn it, and afterwards to gain admis sion into a body which always made obstacles to the entrance of new corners, and limited their number. The pretence of thus watching over the training of artisans cannot be made good. It has often been proved, that rivalship alone gives that training, whilst a long apprentice ship blunts the mind and discourages industry ; but the true, though secret object, to diminish the number of those exercising a trade, was attained. The corporate body exer cised a kind of monopoly against the consumer ; it took care at all times to keep the supply below the demand. The merchant doubtless gained more; but he gained on a smaller production. There was less work done, less in crease of capital, less population supported ; and as to the merchant's extraordinary profit, it was compensated by an equal loss to the consumer, who was obliged to pay, not according to his own advantage or convenience, but ac cording to the arbitrary caprice of a corporation which gave laws to him.
In all trading countries, a more or less exclusive mono poly has been granted, on certain occasions, to some asso ciations of merchants, under the name of Trading Com panies. The avowed motive for sacrificing the whole class to this privileged number was the particular nature of the trade thus subjected to a monopoly, which trade it was said could not be supported except by very extensive funds; but governments had often a secret motive besides ; and this was, the suni of money for which the merchants bought their privilege. A company's monopoly has never failed to heighten the price for the consumer, to diminish production and consumption, to give the national capital a false direction ; sometimes by attracting it prematurely to a branch of trade which was not yet suitable, sometimes by repelling it when fruitlessly seeking an employment.
But although companies obtained the desired privilege of buying cheap and selling dear, by nature they arc so ill suited for economy and trading speculations, that although amazingly rich, and sometimes sovereigns of countries, these companies, their administrators having no immediate interest in the prosperity of their trust, have almost all been robbed, and very few of them have not ended in bankruptcy.
These different expedients for the protection of corn merce, are now generally decried, though almost all governments yet agree in repelling from their states the produce of foreign manufactories, or at least in loading it with heavy duties, to give the national produce an advan tage. The prohibitive system of custom-house duties plainly gives to a growing manufactory an advantage equivalent to the largest bounty. Perhaps this manufac tory scarcely produces the hundredth part of what the na tion consumes of such commodities; but the hundred purchasers must compete with each other to obtain the one seller's preference, and the ninety-nine rejected by him will be compelled to obtain goods by smuggling. In this case, the nation's loss will be as a hundred ; its gain as one. Whatever advantage may arise from giving a new manufacture to a nation, certainly there are few which deserve such a sacrifice, and even these might always be set agoing by less expensive means. Besides, we must also take into account the weighty inconveniences of establishing the vexatious system of duties, of covering the frontiers with an army of custom-house officers, and with another not less dangerous army of smugglers, and thus of naming the subjects to disobedience. NVe must remember, above all, that it is not the interest of a nation to produce every thing indifferently ; that it ought to con fine its efforts to such goods or commodities as it can manufacture at the cheapest rate; or to such as, whatever price they cost, are essential to its safety. It ought to be recollected that each merchant knows his own business better (hail government can do ; that the whole nation's productive power is limited ; that in a given time, it has but a given number of hands, and a given quantity of capital ; that by forcing it to enter upon a kind of work which it did not previously execute, we almost always at the same time force it to abandon a kind of work which it did execute : whilst the most probable result of such a change is the abandonment of a more lucrative manufacture for another which is less so, and which personal interest had designedly overlooked.