432

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

restored only by slow gradations, and with a good deal ofreserve and circumspection. Were those high duties and pro-hibitionstaken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of thesame kind might be poured so fast into the home market, asto deprive all at once many thousands of our people of theirordinary employment and means of subsistence. The dis-order which this would occasion might no doubt be very con-siderable. It would in all probability, however, be much lessthan is commonly imagined, for the two following reasons:

First, all those manufactures, of which any part is com-monly exported to other European countries without abounty, could be very little affected by the freest importationof foreign goods. Such manufactures must be sold as cheapabroad as any other foreign goods of the same quality andkind, and consequently must be sold cheaper at home. Theywould still, therefore, keep possession of the home market,and though a capricious man of fashion might sometimesprefer foreign wares, merely because they were foreign, tocheaper and better goods of the same kind that were made athome, this folly could, from the nature of things, extend to sofew, that it could make no sensible impression upon the gene-ral employment of the people. But a great part of all thedifferent branches of our woollen manufacture, of our tannedleather, and of our hardware, are annually exported to otherEuropean countries without any bounty, and these are themanufactures which employ the greatest number of hands.The silk, perhaps, is the manufacture which would sufferthe most by this freedom of trade, and after it the linen,though the latter much less than the former.

Secondly, though a great number of people should, bythus restoring the freedom of trade, be thrown all at onceout of their ordinary employment and common method ofsubsistence, it would by no means follow that they wouldthereby be deprived either of employment or subsistence.By the reduction of the army and navy at the end of the latewar, more than a hundred thousand soldiers and seamen, anumber equal to what is employed in the greatest manufac-tures, were all at once thrown out of their ordinary employ-ment; but, though they no doubt suffered some inconveni-ency, they were not thereby deprived of all employment andsubsistence. The greater part of the seamen, it is probable,gradually betook themselves to the merchant-service as theycould find occasion, and in the mean time both they and the.