THE WEALTH OK NATIONS.

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them, without any sufficient reason, by the groundless jea-lousy of the merchants and manufacturers of the mothercountry. In a more advanced state they might be reallyoppressive and insupportable.

Great Britain too, as she coniines to her own market someof the most important productions of the colonies, so incompensation she gives to some of them an advantage in thatmarket; sometimes by imposing higher duties upon the likeproductions when imported from other countries, and some-times by giving bounties upon their importation from the co-lonies. In the first way she gives an advantage in the homemarket to the sugar, tobacco, and iron of her own colonies,and in the second to their raw silk, to their hemp and flax, totheir indigo, to their naval stores, and to their building tim-ber. This second way of encouraging the colony produceby bounties upon importation, is, so far as I have been ableto learn, peculiar to Great Britain. The first is not. Por-tugal does not content herself with imposing higher dutiesupon the importation of tobacco from any other country, butprohibits it under the severest penalties.

With regard to the importation of goods from Europe ,England has likewise dealt more liberally with her coloniesthan any other nation.

Great Britain allows a part, almost always the half, gene-rally a larger portion, and sometimes the whole of the dutywhich is paid upon the importation of foreign goods to bedrawn back upon their exportation to any foreign country.No independent foreign country, it was easy to foresee, wouldreceive them it they came to it loaded with the heavy dutiesto which almost all foreign goods are subjected on their im-portation into Great Britain. Unless, therefore, some partof those duties was drawn back upon exportation, there wasan end of the carrying trade; a trade so much favoured bythe mercantile system.

Our colonies, however, are by no means independent fo-reign countries; and Great. Britain having assumed to her-self the exclusive right of supplying them with all goods fromEurope , might have forced them (in the same manner as othercountries have done their colonies) to receive such goodsloaded with all the same duties which they paid in the mo-ther country. But, on the contrary, till 1703, the samedrawbacks were paid upon the exportation of the greater part°f foreign goods to our colonies as to an independent foreign