Section XCIX.
Freedom Of Competition And International Trade.
Does the same rule apply to the commercial intercourse of nations? Where the feeling that all mankind constitute one vast family is stronger than that of their political and religious diversity; where the sense of right and the love of peace have extinguished every dangerous spark of ambition for empire and all warlike jealousy; where, especially, their economic interests are rightly understood on both sides, a real conflict between the interests of two nations must always be a phenomenon of rare occurrence, and an exception to the general rule, which should not be admitted until it has been clearly demonstrated to exist.[591] Highly cultivated nations generally [pg 300] look upon the first steps in the civilization of a foreign people with a more favorable eye than they do on the subsequent progress which brings such nations nearer to themselves.[592] Yet the realization of the above mentioned conditions on all sides is something so improbable, unpatriotic “philanthropy” something so suspicious,[593] the greater number of mankind [pg 301] so incapable of development except under the limitations of nationality, that I should observe the total disappearance of national jealousies only with solicitude. Nothing so much contributed to the Macedonian and Roman conquests as the cosmopolitanism of the later Greek philosophers.[594]
As all commerce is based on the mutual dependence of the contracting parties, we need not be surprised to find international commerce so dependent. But this dependence need not, by any means, be equally great on both sides. Rather is the individual or the nation which stands in most urgent need of foreign goods or products the most dependent. Hence, it seems that, in the commercial intercourse between an agricultural and an industrial people, in which the former furnish food and the raw material of manufactures, and the latter manufactured articles, the latter are the more dependent. In case of war, for instance, it is much easier to dispense for a long time with manufactured articles than with most articles of food.[595] However, this condition of things is very much modified, for the better, by all those circumstances on which the dominant active commerce of a nation depends. It is, for instance, much easier for the English, on account of their greater familiarity with, and knowledge of the laws and nature of commerce, on account of their business connections, their capital, credit and means of transportation, but more particularly on account of the greater capacity of circulation of their national resources, to find a new market in the stead of one that has been closed to them, than it is for the Russians with their much more immoveable system of public economy.[596] It [pg 302] is true, however, that an effective blockade, which excluded both of these nations from all the markets of the world, would be much more injurious to England than to Russia.