[199-3] Basing himself hereon, Petty, Political Anatomy of Ireland, 82 ff., questions the usual opinion, that Ireland suffered so much from absenteeism. He says that a prohibition of absenteeism carried out to its logical conclusion would require every man to sit on the sod he had tilled himself. Carey, On the Rate of Wages, 1835, 477, calls English capitalists who draw interest from America, absentees.
[199-4] The older political economists have, as a rule, ignored this law, and were wont to consider every payment of money to a foreign country as injurious. Thus, for instance, Culpeper, Tract against the high Rate of Usury, 1623, 1640, disapproves all loans made from foreign countries, because they draw more money in interest, and in repayment of the principal out of the nation, than they brought into it at first; and all the more, as the loan is generally procured, not in the precious metals, but in foreign goods, of which there is a superabundance in the home country. Similarly Child, Discourse of Trade, 1690, 79, who claims that the creditor was always fattened at the expense of the debtor. Hence v. Schröder, Fürst, Schatz- und Rentkammar, 141, advises that the capital borrowed in foreign countries should be confiscated. Compare, also, v. Justi, Staatswirthschaft, II, 461. And yet the very simplest calculation shows, that if a man borrows $1,000 at 5 per cent. and makes 10, he is doing a good business with the borrowed capital. This Locke, Considerations, 9, recognizes very clearly. Compare, also, J. B. Say, Traité, II, ch. 10, and Hermann, Staatsw. Unters., 365 seq.
[199-5] Think of the English creditors in Portugal and the Genoese in Corsica (Steuart, Principles, II, ch. 29.) Considered simply from an economic standpoint, the Edinburg Review, XX, 358, very clearly demonstrates that England should recruit her army from Ireland, where wages are so much lower than in Great Britain. But how dangerous in a political sense! In 1832, one-fourth of the stock of the United States Bank was in the hands of foreigners, and hence its opponents nick-named it the "British Bank." By the rules of the principal bank in Philadelphia, in 1836, only American citizens were allowed a vote in its proceedings. Similarly in the case of the Bank of France. (M. Chevalier, Lettres sur l'Amerique du N. I, 364.) It may be remarked in general, that the older political economists have based correct political views on false economic principles, while the more modern ignore them entirely.
[199-6] Compare Montesquieu, E. des Lois L, XXII, 17; Blackstone, Commentaries, I, 320.
[199-7] Thus Austria conceded, in 1854-55, a number of railways to French capitalists, and always favored the purchase of landed estates by small foreign princes. In the latter case, Austrian influence abroad was much more promoted by the measure than was foreign influence in Austria.
[199-8] Every nationality is not worth the sacrificing of the highest economic advantage or profit to it. Or, would it be preferable to leave the Hottentots and Caffirs, poor, barbarous and heathenish?
INFLUENCE OF THE BRANCHES OF INCOME ON THE PRICE OF COMMODITIES.
In relation to foreign trade, in the narrowest sense of the term, fears were formerly very frequently expressed and are sometimes even now, which in the last analysis are based on the assumption that one country might be underbid by another in all branches of commodities.[200-1] This is evidently absurd. Whoever wants to pay for foreign commodities can do it only in goods of his own. When he pays for them with money, the money is either the immediate product of his own husbandry (mining countries!), or the mediate product obtained by the previous surrender of products of his own. To receive from foreign countries all the objects which one has need of, would be to receive them as a gift.
It is just as absurd to fear that the three branches of income in the same country's economy should be all relatively high at the same time, and competition with foreign countries be thus made more difficult. Rent and interest especially in this respect have to demean themselves in ways diametrically opposed to each other.[200-2] When trade is entirely free, every nation will engage at last in those branches of production which require chiefly the productive forces which are cheapest in that country; that is which the relatively low level of the corresponding branch of income recommends to individual economy and enterprise. The merely absolute and personal height of the three branches of income has, as we have said, no direct influence on the price of commodities. In this respect, all these may be higher in one country than in another. Thus, for instance, English landowners, capitalists and workmen may be all at the same time in a better economic condition respectively than Polish landowners, capitalists and workmen, when the national income of England stands to its area and population in general, in a much more favorable ratio than the Polish.[200-3]