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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

trade of any particular country is carried on with the shipsand sailors of that country, that part of the capital employedin it which pays the freight, is distributed among, and putsinto motion, a certain number of productive labourers of thatcountry. Almost all nations that have had any considerableshare of the carrying trade have, in fact, carried it on in thismanner. The trade itself has probably derived its name fromit, the people of such countries being the carriers to othercountries. It does not, however, seem essential to the natureof the trade that it should be so. A Dutch merchant may,for example, employ his capital in transacting the commerceof Poland and Portugal , by carrying part of the surplus pro-duce of the one to the other, not in Dutch, but in British bottoms. It may be presumed, that lie actually does so uponsome particular occasions. It is upon this account, however,that the carrying trade has been supposed peculiarly advan-tageous to such a country as Great Britain, of which the de-fence and security depend upon the number of its sailors andshipping. But the same capital may employ as many sailorsand shipping either in the foreign trade of consumption oreven in the home-trade, when carried on by coasting vessels,as it could in the carrying trade. The number of sailors andshipping which any particular capital can employ, does notdepend upon the nature of the trade, but partly upon thebulk of the goods in proportion to their value, and partly uponthe distance of the ports between which they are to be car-ried; chiefly upon the former of those two circumstances.The coal trade from Newcastle to London , for example, em-ploys more shipping than all the carrying trade of England,though the ports are at no great distance. To force, there-fore, by extraordinary encouragements, a larger share of thecapital of any country into the carrying trade, than whatwould naturally go to it, will not always necessarily increasethe shipping of that country.

The capital, therefore, employed in the home trade of anycountry will generally give encouragement and support to agreater quantity of productive labour in that country, and in-crease the value of its annual produce more than an equal capi-tal employed in the foreign trade of consumption: and thecapital employed in this latter trade has in both these re-spects a still greater advantage over an equal capital employedin the carrying trade. The riches, and so far as power de-pends upon riches, the power of every country, must always