Thoughts on the mechanism of societies

by marquis de Charles Casaux

It was represented to a Prince truly worthy of the throne he fills, that a manufactory, in which 8 or 900 persons were constantly employed, stood him in 4 or 5,000 crowns more than it produced. How! (replied the Sovereign) does it cost me no more than 4 or 5,000 crowns to feed a thousand beggars, and keep them constantly at work? It is a cheap bargain indeed! The most subtle of all ministers of state could make no other reply to such an answer, than to propose some means, equally effectual, and calculated to attain, at a cheaper rate, the two most important ends that a prince can have in view, destroying beggary, and, in a manner, creating labour.

There are, no doubt, some other circumstances, which may also justify premiums on exportation; for instance, the wheat intended for exportation, is an indispensable article amongst the necessaries of life: it constitutes one third, sometimes the half of a nation’s riches; it is essential that it be not in such quantity as to fall in price, because the disparagement of its value would discourage the cultivator; yet it is advantageous that there should be, upon a medium, a little more than is wanted, in order to keep it at the medium price it ought to fetch, that one may have it in his power to purchase that which another wants to sell. The first thing therefore to be examined is, whether the medium price, at which it must be kept, in order to equipoise the quantity of national industry which it must represent, be not so considerable,

First, By reason of some prohibitory act, forbidding the exportation of other productions of the earth, which, by this means, become cheaper than they were before this act took place, oblige the cultivator to advance his price in the others, that the whole may be raised to the level of industry:

Secondly, By reason of some other premiums on exportation, granted to various branches of the national industry, which, on that very account, are grown not only much dearer within the nation, but have also enhanced the price of all other corresponding commodities, by withdrawing from them, hands which would have increased their quantity:

Thirdly, In consequence of some prohibitions or restrictions equivalent thereto, which afford to the national manufacturer the means of selling his goods 10 per cent. dearer than he could do, if such reasonable duties were laid upon foreign industry, as would leave national industry in possession of the advantages, which she has a right to, and deprive her only of the iniquitous privilege of ransoming those by whom she is fostered:

Fourthly, By the effect of those bodies corporate, (corporations) which, if justly appreciated, are but so many private conspiracies against the public, whom they strip of the benefit of national competition, after having wrested from them the advantages of foreign competition, which would soon have been followed by the former, infinitely more important than the other.

If the result of the proposed enquiry should show, that one of these four causes, or rather all of them together, have entirely perverted the natural price of every article in the nation, it seems to me that it would be worth the attention of the legislature to examine also, whether the repeal of all premiums, prohibitions, restrictions, and other devices of the various passions of the human heart, either to clash against each other, or to balance their respective injustice, would not prove adequate to the only aim which we may reasonably wish to attain, I mean that of keeping, at the least expence, a just equilibrium between national agriculture and industry, by securing to both, at the least expence, all the advantages which they have a right to expect from the agriculture and industry of other nations.

But if indeed we were fettered by the errors of past centuries, it would then be necessary to grant, in the fullest extent, the wished-for premium on the most important article; do nothing more for the present, but refuse new ones to all the rest; watch attentively the favourable minute for the restoration of natural order, and forward it, perhaps, by convincing every one, that the most necessary of all premiums would have proved useless, had it not been preceded by prohibitions, restrictions, corporations, &c. the end of which is as manifestly unjust, as their effects are injurious to all but those who sue for them; and that, in fine, a premium granted under a circumstance the most likely to justify such a measure, is not, as several people have hitherto imagined, a necessary means of maintaining elsewhere a foreign competition, but a very inadequate compensation for that foreign competition of which we are deprived in so many respects.