Protection may be accomplished by actual prohibition of the import of particular articles, by exorbitant duties which amount to prohibi tion, or by such duties only as give the home producer an advantage. Duties may also discriminate between the produce of different coun tries, and give the preference to some, to the injury and exclusion of others. In this country all these modes of protection have been resorted to : but their impolicy has been recognised by the legislature, which, within the last few years, has advanced rapidly in the adoption of a more sound system of taxation. [Tanisr.] Duties are called discriminating or differential when they are not levied equally upon the produce or manufactures of different countries. The object of them is to give an advantage to the country on whose commodities the tax is lightest, as compared with others. To obtain such a preference has been the object of various negotiations and com mercial treaties between different states, as it opens extensive markets to the industry of the favoured nation. By the commercial policy of England the principle of discrimination 'nay be said to have been confined to the protmtiOn of our colonies against the competition of foreign countries. As regards each other, all foreign countries enjoy equal commercial advantages in their intercourse with England. It has been contended that colonies form an integral part of the mother country, and that the commercial interceinao between the several parts of the British empire ought to be viewed as a vast coasting-trade, but now foreign vessels are admitted• to this trade in England, although foreign nations refuse to adopt the like practice. If this principle were acted upon, it would certainly present a grand fiscal union worthy of admiration. There were two great articles of consumption, sugar and timber, upon which the discriminating duties have been most mis chievous in their results. These discriminating duties have been abolished. Those on sugar have been noticed. Those on timber were reduced in 1847 and 1848, and in 1860 the difference between foreign and colonial timber was abolished, and ls. per load only is imposed on all.
Export Dulies.—Duties levied upon goods exported to foreign countries are ultimately paid by the foreign consumer, and thus have the effect of making the subject of one state bear the burdens of another. However desirable this may appear to the state, whose treasury is enriched at the expense of foreigners, the expediency of such duties will depend upon peculiar circumstances, and great nicety is required in the regulation of them. If a country possesses within itself some produce or manufacture much in request abroad, and for the production of which it has peculiar advantages, a moderate export duty may be very desirable. In this manner Russia, which almost alone supplies tallow to the rest of Europe, derives a considerable revenue from an export duty upon that article. Upon the same
principle a duty upon machinery exported from Great Britain would have been politic. British machinists far excelled all others in skill and ingenuity, and foreign manufacturers were willing to pay almost any price for their machinery. Notwithstanding the prohibition, large quantities were smuggled abroad at an enormous cost, but the difficulty and expense of evasion were so great that foreigners had latterly almost confined their purchases, in this country, to models and drawings, and made the machinery themselves, with the assistance of British artisans, whom they enticed abroad by extravagant wages. The partial relaxation of the prohibitory law in 1825, by granting licences to export certain kinds of machinery, showed the extent to which the trade might have been carried under a more liberal policy. The official value of machinery exported under licence in 1810 was 593,0641., in addition to various tools allowed by law to be exported, of which no account was taken. The restriction is now removed, and the declared value in 1859 amounted to 2,562,9341.
Though moderate export duties upon articles of which a country has almost the exclusive supply may be advisable, heavy duties will check the demand abroad in the same manner as they affect the con sumption of commodities at home. In the same manner also they are injurious to trade and unprofitable to the revenue.
All duties, whatever, should be avoided upon the export of produce or manufactures which may be also sent from other countries to the same markets. They would discourage trade and offer a premium to foreign competition.
Although the temptation is great to shift taxes from one country to another by means of export dirties, this temptation is equally great in all countries ; and if their several governments should be actuated by the desire to make foreigners contribute to their revenue, their oppor tunities for carrying out such a system would probably be equal, and thus retaliations might be made upon each other, which, after all, would neutralise their efforts to tax foreigners, and leave them in the same position as if they had been contented to tax none but their own subjects. In this power of retaliation lies the antidote to the evil of one state being forced to bear the burdens of another as well as its own. Every state would naturally resist such an impo sition upon its subjects, and export duties can therefore only be safely resorted to in such peculiar cases as we have noticed, where foreigners are willing to pay an increased price for commodities which they must have, and which they cannot obtain so good or so cheap from any other place.