The manufacturers themselves, as consumers, had to pay an additional price for such commodities, and therefore it cannot be correctly said, that "the enhancement of price occasioned by both, (corporation laws and high duties on the importation of foreign commodities,) is every where finally paid by the landlords, farmers, and labourers of the country."
It is the more necessary, to make this remark, as in the present day the authority of Adam Smith is quoted by country gentlemen for imposing similar high duties on the importation of foreign corn. Because the cost of production, and therefore the prices of various manufactured commodities, are raised to the consumer by one error in legislation, the country has been called upon, on the plea of justice, quietly to submit to fresh exactions. Because we all pay an additional price for our linen, muslin, and cottons, it is thought just that we should pay also an additional price for our corn. Because, in the general distribution of the labour of the world, we have prevented the greatest amount of productions from being obtained by that labour in manufactured commodities; we should further punish ourselves by diminishing the productive powers of the general labour in the supply of raw produce. It would be much wiser to acknowledge the errors which a mistaken policy has induced us to adopt, and immediately to commence a gradual recurrence to the sound principles of an universally free trade.
"I have already had occasion to remark," observes M. Say, "in speaking of what is improperly called the balance of trade, that if it suits a merchant better to export the precious metals to a foreign country than any other goods, it is also the interest of the state that he should export them,