They have committed some errors; more will follow: they know not what to fix upon; nor will they know for some time, perhaps for a long time.—Is there a State in Europe that can reproach them with any false step, of which that very same State did not set the precedent at some period of its history?⸺But with their principle concerning exportation, a principle founded on justice and evidence, they have already perceived that the necessitated price of 22 or 24, instead of 20, must be felt in their country alone; and if their commodities exported for the purpose of procuring such articles for their home consumption, as they stand in need of, continue still to yield them the same quantity of those articles of consumption, as were obtained before the war, will they not perceive that the home prices, which the re-action of the taxes shall have set upon the whole of their productions, establish in the country an exact balance of those new prices at which the taxes will oblige them to sell the articles to be imported?
Compelled by necessity to have recourse to paper-money, will it be long before they are made sensible, that nothing more than internal credit is wanted to make this paper equal to coin, and answer all its purposes for ever, if they should be thus wisely inclined,—if this measure should be found the only means of curbing effectually the cupidity of those with whom they shall have occasion to trade?
Will it be long before they perceive, that this credit will follow close upon the solidity of public engagements,—a solidity demonstrated by the evidence of the inutility of a base and infamous robbery?
Will it be long before they feel that all the actual wealth of a State, its real wealth, is nothing more or less than the mass of its present industry; that all its possible wealth can arise only from the sum of all its possible labour; that the greatest riches are only the greatest sum of labour? that if this labour is a bitter pill, the gold and silver in which it is wrapped up, are only (like honours, titles, dignities, fame, esteem, &c.) different kinds of powders, which sweeten the taste of it to those who are ignorant of its value, to those who know not how necessary labour is to support every day, without being weary, and sometimes without regret, the wretched burthen of our lives; and in fine, that paper, once got into credit, can, in this respect, be an ample substitute for gold and silver ... but how many circumstances, where gold and silver cannot supply the want of credit?
Will it be long before they become sensible, that they are clogged in no part of their legislation, by those preposterous maxims which can be justified only by the circumstances that gave them birth, by those tyrannical regulations which owed their success wholely to the ignorance of their cotemporaries, by that chaos of contradictory regulations, all of which became perhaps necessary by degrees, after the first was extorted by cupidity?[6]
Under what Point of View Premiums and other Encouragements of Exportation may be considered.
The principles of the Americans concerning exportation, lead us to the examination of the doctrine of premiums.
If the want of objects, capable of exercising advantageously the industry of a numerous and active people, should compel government, on account of some difficulties unconquerable by art and nature, to apply that industry to some other object, on which it would be impossible to support abroad the competition of another nation, that is, to offer equally with the latter an even quantity of labour of one sort, for an even quantity of labour of a different one, there is no doubt but, in such a case, a certain premium, to maintain the competition with the country most partially favoured by art and nature, would prove, of all institutions, the most judicious and the most humane; it would be a kind of indirect tax in favour of laborious indigence; a tax, much more eligible than many others, which, though destined to the relief of wretchedness, often increase it, by checking the efforts of industry, by even providing a resource for idleness, and sometimes an alluring, a comfortable prospect for debauchery.