Employ a workman in a country where there is little trade or industry, he proportions his price always to the urgency of your want, or your capacity to pay; but seldom to his own labour. Employ another in a country of trade, he will not impose upon you, unless perhaps you be a stranger, which supposes your being ignorant of the value; but employ the same workman in a work not usual in the country, consequently not demanded, consequently not regulated as to the value, he will proportion his price as in the first supposition.
We may therefore conclude from what has been said, that in a country where trade is established, manufactures must flourish, from the ready sale, the regulated price of work, and certain profit resulting from industry. Let us next inquire into the consequences of such a situation.
CHAP. V.
How foreign Trade opens to an industrious People, and the consequences of it to the Merchants who set it on foot.
The first consequence of the situation described in the preceding chapter, is, that wants are easily supplied, for the adequate value of the thing wanted.
The next consequence is, the opening of foreign trade under its two denominations of passive and active. Strangers and people of distant countries finding the difficulty of having their wants supplied at home, and the ease of having them supplied from this country, immediately have recourse to it. This is passive trade. The active is when merchants, who have executed this plan at home with success, begin to transport the labour of their countrymen into other regions, which either produce, or are capable of producing such articles of consumption, proper to be manufactured, as are most demanded at home; and consequently will meet with the readiest sale, and fetch the largest profits.
Here then is the opening of foreign trade, under its two denominations of active and passive: but as our present point of view is the consequences of this revolution to the merchants, we shall take no farther notice, in this place, of that division: it will naturally come in afterwards.
What then are the consequences of this new commerce to our merchants, who have left their homes in quest of gain abroad?
The first is, that arriving in any new country, they find themselves in the same situation, with regard to the inhabitants, as the workman in the country of no trade, with regard to those who employed him; that is, they proportion the price of their goods to the eagerness of acquiring, or the capacity of paying, in the inhabitants, but never to their real value.
The first profits then, upon this trade, must be very considerable; and the demand from such a country will be high or low, great or small, according to the spirit, not the real wants of the people: for these in all countries, as has been said, must first be supplied by the inhabitants themselves, before they cease to labour.