inventions and improvements of our neighbours. The commodity is {p68} first imported from abroad, to our great discontent, while we imagine that it drains us of our money; afterwards the art itself is gradually imported, to our visible advantage. Yet we continue still to repine that our neighbours should possess any art, industry, and invention, forgetting that had they not first instructed us we should have been at present barbarians, and did they not still continue their instructions, the arts must fall into a state of languor, and lose that emulation and novelty which contribute so much to their advancement.
The increase of domestic industry lays the foundation of foreign commerce. Where a great number of commodities are raised and perfected for the home-market there will always be found some which can be exported with advantage. But if our neighbours have no art nor cultivation, they cannot take them, because they will have nothing to give in exchange. In this respect, states are in the same condition as individuals. A single man can scarce be industrious where all