Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals from Country to Country and the Mercantile Theory of Wealth: Delivered Before the University of Oxford, in June, 1827 (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from Three Lectures on the Transmission of the Precious Metals From Country to Country and the Mercantile Theory of Wealth: Delivered Before the University of Oxford, in June, 1827

That every restriction on the importation of French silks is a restriction on the exportation of those articles with which those silks would have been purchased. That if it benefit the English silk manufacturer, it injures, to at least an equal amount in the whole, though the injury is less perceptible, because more widely diffused, the cotton-spinner, the cutler, or the clothier. That the whole body Of producers, therefore, as an aggregate, suffer in their capa city Of consumers without compensation.

The really candid defender of restriction (and I am inclined to think that such persons do exist) admits, perhaps, the force of this argument, as applied to nations willing to take in exchange our commodities. To them he is willing to open our market on a footing, as he calls it, Of reciprocity. But he urges, that there are many who refuse our commodities; and, while they persist in this ungrateful refusal, he retaliates by not accepting theirs.

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