He must consider the advancement of the common good as a direct object of private interest to every individual, and by a disinterested administration of the public money, he must plainly make it appear that it is so.
From this principle flows the authority, vested in all governments, to load the community with taxes, in order to advance the prosperity of the state. And this object can be nowise better obtained than by applying the amount of them to the keeping an even balance between work and demand. Upon this the health of a trading state principally depends.
If the failure of foreign demand be found to proceed from the superior natural advantages of other countries, he must double his diligence to promote luxury among his neighbours; he must support simplicity at home; he must increase his bounties upon exportation; and his expence in relieving manufactures, when the price of their industry falls below the expence of their subsistence.
While these operations are conducted with coolness and perseverance, while the allurements of the wealth acquired do not frustrate the execution, the statesman may depend upon seeing foreigners return to his ports, so soon as their own dissipation, and want of frugality, come to compensate the advantages which nature had given them over their frugal and industrious neighbours.
If this plan be pursued, foreign trade will increase in proportion to the number of inhabitants; and domestic luxury will serve only as an instrument in the hands of the statesman to increase demand when the home supply becomes too great for foreign consumption. In other words, the rich citizens will be engaged to consume what is superfluous, in order to keep the balance even in favour of the industrious, and in favour of the nation.
The whole purport of this plan is to point out the operation of three very easy principles.
The first, That in a country entirely taken up with the object of promoting foreign trade, no competition should be allowed to come from abroad for articles of the first necessity, and principally for food, so as to raise prices beyond a certain standard.
The second, That no domestic competition should be allowed upon articles of superfluity, so as to raise prices beyond a certain standard.
The third, That when these standards cannot be preserved, and that from natural causes, prices get above them, public money must be thrown into the scale to bring prices to the level of those of exportation.
The greater the extent of foreign trade in any nation, the lower these standards must be kept; the less the extent of it, the higher they may be allowed to rise. Consequently,