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I have already stated (in Sect. I.) the perilous and precar i ou sstate of a nation of mere manufacturers or merchants, depend*ent for the means of subsistence upon the agriculture of foreignnations, and the approach which is made to that state, when, byextra encouragement given by government, manufactures andcommerce are made to start before, instead of keeping pace with,domestic agriculture, and capital is attracted from the latter tothe former. The excess to which manufactures and commerceare thus carried, and the extent of dependence upon foreign a-griculture, to which the nation is by this means reduced, may beestimated by the average excess of the import above the exportof grain, and the proportion of this excess to the probable whole'national yearly consumption of grain.
Besides the injury done to agriculture, and tlie dependencebrought upon the nation, through the overweening anxiety of theLegislature to encourage manufactures and commerce, it mightfurther be observed, that the latter species of industry may some-times be hurt by an over anxious nursing care. The child thatis kept constantly in swaddling-bands, will never acquire the useof its own limbs; and where minute regulation leaves no roomfor liberty of thought and action, it is in vain to expect the exer-tion of spirited enterprise. Minute regulations of trade may, inthis respect, be compared to prescribed modes of management in'leases. In a former Note, Sect. II . p. 208 A seg., I have advert-ed to the regulations of our.Scots favourite linen trade ; as also, tothe regulations of the favourite English woollen trade, for en-suring perfection of work, &c ; which latter, after being in non-observance for more than half a century, in some of the moreextensively manufacturing districts, were at last, as to those dis-tricts, formally repealed by Parliament in 1808. It is probably0 "'tng to this over anxious nursing care, that the linen manufac-ture of Scotland remains trifling and inconsiderable, in compari-son of that of cotton ; which latter has happily esca|>ed the fet-ters of minute interference of regulation. Had regulation beenequally applied to the latter as to the former, that maternal so-licitude, which has guarded, by express statute, against expos-ln g a linen web to the harsh action oflime and of pigeon’s dung,would never have suffered the thin texture of a piece of muslinto be subjected to the risk of being passed over a red-hot cylin-der of iron,—a manipulation by which our Scots manufacturers
cotton proposed to give a smoothness to their fabrics, to rivalthose of the East Indies.
The following statements, from the second volume of Chal.■Wrs's Caledonia, may be amusing, though not of much import-ance.
The quantity of linen manufactured in Scotland , is easily as-certained, as it must all undergo the examination of an appoint-ed inspector, and even receive, from his stamp, a sort of coin-u. Q