(11) “Considering all the natural and acquired advantages that we possess for this purpose, it should rather create surprise and regret that our commerce is so small, than engender pride because it is so large.”
“We may conclude then that improvements in production and emigration of capital to the more fertile soils and unworked mines of the uninhabited or thinly peopled parts of the globe, do not, as it appears to a superficial view, diminish the gross produce and the demand for labour at home, but, on the contrary, are what we have chiefly to depend on for the increasing both, and are even the necessary conditions of any great or prolonged augmentations of either; nor is it any exaggeration to say, that, within limits, the more capital a country like England expends in these two ways, the more she will have left.”—J. S. Mill, Polit. Econ.
(12) For “a very large amount of capital belonging to individuals have, of late years, sought profitable investment in other lands. It has been computed, that the United States have, during the last five years, absorbed in this manner more than £25,000,000 of English capital.” And how much more, it may be asked, has gone to the continent of Europe and elsewhere?
“When a few years have elapsed without a crisis, and no new and tempting channel for investment has been opened in the meantime, there is always found to have occurred, in these few years, so large an increase of capital seeking investment, as to have lowered considerably the rate of interest, whether indicated by the prices of securities, or by the rate of discount on bills; and this diminution of interest tempts the possessors to incur hazards, in hopes of a more considerable return.”—Mill’s Political Economy.
(13) The Spectator has seriously remarked—“It is sometimes observed, that although taxes have been remitted to the amount of millions, the revenue has kept up; and that fact is vaunted as the vindication of free trade: but one inference to be drawn from it has escaped notice—it shows that the riches of the country must have increased enormously, and it implies that many of the wealthy are escaping more and more from a due share of the general burden, as taxation is diminished and wealth increased.”
“Our exports have increased in value since 1824 from 38 millions to 68 millions.”
(14) “It will be found by the Parliamentary Tables, which all can consult, that the amount of money raised in those eighteen years was nearly 1500 millions. The total revenue raised in those years was more than 981 millions; and the total of the money borrowed was more than 470 millions; making, in all, 1451 millions. And it is worth while to note, that, in one of those years, namely, in 1813, the sum of more than 150 millions was raised in revenue and loan, of which nearly 82 millions was loan for the national use; and this in a single year; and that year 1813, in the midst of a dreadful war, and thirty-five years ago;—since when the country has grown much richer.”