Fifthly, The more you increase industry and activity amongst other nations, the more you increase their want of those signs which are to represent the products; the more you increase their want of those signs which you long to possess exclusively, if it were possible: Therefore,
Sixthly, If it be true, that money ought to be the only aim of commerce and exportation, all the favourite ideas on the pretended balance, being entirely destroyed by facts, even at the time when the world was more fully persuaded of the truth of those ideas, and of the wisdom of the measures which were to have perpetuated that balance, it would be necessary henceforth to resolve to hide money under ground, as fast as it comes in.—Would it not be better to question the principle itself, and seek for fresh information on the utility as well as the object of exportation?
Exportations and Importations considered as a Game. Such a Game is as rational as any other, to whosoever will not content himself with playing at Cards, or with his own Thoughts.
A world of unanswerable arguments start up at once, tending to demonstrate the superiority of civilization over the wild state of nature. Yet, methinks, a savage may overturn them all by these few words: I know nothing of what you say, and I am not inquisitive.—I readily confess at least, that I do not see what reply can be made to such an answer, more than I did with regard to the four questions put in the Upper House to the manufacturer of whom I have spoken; yet this manufacturer was not stronger in argument on all that was foreign to the essential point of the four questions, than I might be to convince my savage of that delight, which a man fully persuaded of the excellence of his own conceits, and of the happiness there is in making them known to all the world, feels, without allay, without interruption, in staining some reams of paper, scribbling sometimes an hypothesis, sometimes a comedy, a romance, a ballad, &c.; for it is very true, that the work I now lay before the public, has, in the space of 12 or 15 years, undergone all those metamorphoses in my hands, and that during that time my heart rankled with the ambition of being read in antichambers, given for premiums in colleges, tolerated in nunneries, mentioned in the boudoirs of the fair, noticed in the memory of Ministers, revolved in the hearts of Sovereigns, and every day sung about the streets and in cottages, through which all princes must sometimes pass, if they wish to discover some decisive difference between the interesting illusions of humanity and the deep speculations of politics. Yet with all that stock of words, if not of reasons, that I must have acquired beforehand, to justify, in some measure, the extravagance of such an ambition, I own that I should be confounded by the answer of my savage.—But this could not be the case, if a civilised man, after having convinced me, that the advantage of commerce between man and man, as well as between nation and nation, consists in supplying each other’s wants, when it is possible to effect it by an exchange of surplusses, would next undertake to prove to me, that the advantage of a State, which is nothing else but a nation, an aggregation of men, consists in keeping as much as possible of that money which they have in too great abundance, though the inevitable consequence would be, that they would procure to themselves so much less of some article in which they might be deficient, but which it would at the same time be very convenient to them to possess.—It is hard that the compendium of prohibitions, restrictions, &c. so much commended, and which have kept so many great men so long on the watch, dwindles finally into the assertion of the two contradictory propositions which I have just now dated.
Two articles are necessary and sufficient to man—bread and water; let not meat be called in as a third; it is too well known, that three fourths of Europe seldom eat any, and doubtless no one will contend that three fourths of a whole are less valuable than the fourth remaining, in the eyes of Him who created that whole, and who probably takes some concern in its preservation. Exchanges of any other articles besides bread and water, are therefore, strictly speaking, exchanges of mere superfluities. Now, what inconvenience can there be in bartering one superfluity against another?
I shall first of all, display in their full force, the most solid reasonings that can possibly be adduced, in order to demonstrate, that the choice and price of all superfluities must be left to the discretion of one set of men only. The chymist is not to blame if he can extract nothing but a fetid oil from the matter which he undertakes to decompound.
That set of men, as estimable, as worthy as any in the world, will perhaps wonder when they see the analysis of those ideas, which, probably, they never submitted but to a superficial examination.
Prohibitory Laws against Exportation.
Query. Why do you solicit a prohibitory law against the exporting of such an article of national product?
Answer. That I may get it cheaper.