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431

try, at that time under the dominion of Spain , prohibited inreturn the importation of English woollens. In 1700, theprohibition of importing bone-lacc into England was takenoil' 141011 condition that the importation of English woollensinto Flanders should be put on the same footing as before.

There may be good policy in retaliations of this kind, whenthere is a probability that they will procure the repeal of thehigh duties or prohibitions complained of. The recovery ofa great foreign market will generally more than compensatethe transitory inconveniency of paying dearer during a shorttime for some sorts of goods. To judge whether such retalia-tions are likely to produce such an effect, does not, perhaps,belong so much to the science of the legislator, whose deli-berations ought to be governed by general principles whichare always the same, as to the skill of that insidious and craftyanimal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whosecouncils are directed by the momentary 11 actuations of affairs.When there is no probability that any such repeal can be pro-cured, it seems a bad method of compensating the injury doneto certain classes of our people, to do another injury ourselves,not only to those classes, but to almost all the other classes ofthem. When our neighbours prohibit some manufacture ofours, wc generally prohibit not only the same, for that alonewould seldom affect them considerably, but some other manu-facture of theirs. This may no doubt give encouragementto some particular class of workmen among ourselves, andby excluding some of their rivals, may enable them to raisetheir price in the home market. Those workmen, however,who suffered by our neighbours’prohibition, will not be bene-fited by ours. On the contrary, they and almost all theother classes of our citizens will thereby be obliged to paydearer than before for certain goods. Every such law, there-fore, imposes a real tax upon the whole country, not in favourof that particular class of workmen who were injured by ourneighbours’prohibition, but of some other class.

The case in which it may sometimes be a matter of delibe-ration, how far, or in what manner, it is proper to restore thefree importation of foreign goods, after it has been for sometime interrupted, is, when particular manufactures,by meansof high duties or prohibitions upon all foreign goods whichcan come into competition with them, have been so far ex-tended as to employ a great multitude of hands. Humanitymay in this case reepdre that the freedom ol trade should be