/

030 THK N'ATUKK AND CAL’SF.S OF

fill up, in some measure, a very important void, and supplythe place of the merchants, artificers, and manufacturers, whomthe inhabitants of those countries ought to find at home, butwhom, from some defect in their policy, they do not find athome.

It can never be the interest of those landed nations, if Imay call them so, to discourage oV distress the industry of suchmercantile states, by imposing high duties upon their trade,or upon the commodities which they furnish. Such duties, byrendering those commodities dearer, could serve only to sinkthe real value of the surplus produce of their own land, withwhich, or, what comes to the same thing, with the price ofwhich those commodities are purchased. Such duties couldserve only to discourage the increase of that surplus produce,and consequently the improvement and cultivation of theirown land. The most elfectual expedient, on the contrary,for raising the value of that surplus produce, for encouragingits increase, and consequently the improvement and cultiva-tion of their own land, would be to allow the most perfectfreedom to the trade of all such mercantile nations.

This perfect freedom of trade would even be the most ef-fectual expedient for supplying them, in due time, with allthe artificers, manufacturers, and merchants whom they wantedat home, and for filling up in the properest and most advan-tageous manner that very important void which they feltthere.

The continual increase of the surplus produce of their landwould, in due time, create a greater capital than what couldbe employed with the ordinary rate of profit in the improve-ment and cultivation of land ; and the surplus part of it wouldnaturally turn itself to the employment of artificers and ma-nufacturers at home. But those artificers and manufacturers,finding at home both the materials of their work and the fundof their subsistence, might immediately, even with touch lessart and skill, be able to work as cheap as the little artificersand manufacturers of such mercantile states, who had both tobring from a greater distance. Even though, from want ofart and skill, they might not for some time be able to work ascheap, yet, finding a market at home, they might be able tosell their work there as cheap as that of the artificers and ma-nufacturers of such mercantile states, which could not bebrought to that market but from so great a distance ; and astheir art and skill improved, they would soon be able to sell it