chasers. A new tax may deprive a nation of the comparatively superior facility it before possessed in its manufacture. War may destroy a foreign market, by so raising the freight and insurance on its transport that it can no longer stand against the competition it has to meet in that market. Rival manufactures, too, may produce the same effect. In such cases, the manufacturer is often obliged to abandon his occupation, and endeavour to find some other; making a sacrifice of his tools, fixed capital, and all his acquired skill and knowledge in the manufacture. Distress is the unavoidable consequence of this loss; which must be felt during a long interval of time. The quicker the change is made, however, the less will be the suffering; which cannot but continue until the individuals have become established in some other occupation. Hence the expediency of affording every facility to the transfer of industry from one occupation to another, as changes of demand call for it.

The natural seat of manufactures is in situations favourable for extensive communication by land or water carriage, with places where a market exists for its productions, or whence a supply of its materials may be procured. They are found, however, at times to migrate from place to place in the expectation of superior advantages being found for carrying them on. The coal districts are the natural seat of those manufactures in which fuel is largely required; and it is partly to the cheapness of fuel that is to be ascribed the removal of the woollen manufacture from the southern to the northern counties of England; while another cause is to be found in workmen of greater docility having at first been procured, and at lower wages. The opposition of workmen to the introduction of improved processes or machinery which saved labour, and their combinations to raise or maintain wages at an unreasonable height, have in too many instances deprived their employers of the means of gaining a livelihood by business, when a falling off of demand may have diminished the sale of the article; while their violent conduct has rendered the property and lives of their masters insecure, and compelled them to seek for other situations for carrying on their business. Such conduct in the workmen is always sure to prove more mischievous in its conse

quences to themselves than even to their employers. They ought to recollect, that though only one factory should be broken up in this way, its removal to a new district where the same manufacture has not before existed, may lead to its extension there; and thus not only deprive them of the employment before procured, but still further reduce the value of their labour by bringing a new competition into the market.

CHAPTER XIV.

ON COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY.

THE division of employments, and the diversity of soil, climate, and productions natural and artificial, of different places and countries, give rise to the interchange of commodities. The productions both natural and artificial of different countries are exceedingly dissimilar. Many of the rough materials which nature furnishes to the arts are to be found only in certain spots; and whoever would procure them must be at the trouble or cost of bringing them thence. It is the same with the productions of art. Many necessary or desirable articles are produced only by the inhabitants of certain countries. Others are produced with so much greater facility, and at so much less cost, in some countries than in others, that it is advantageous to other nations to procure their supply of such articles from. thence, in preference to producing them at a greater cost themselves. Although some countries are more liberally supplied than others with raw productions by the hand of nature, and although the inhabitants of some are more skilful than those of others in raising and manufacturing desirable articles; yet there are few countries, however poorly supplied by nature, and however unskilful their inhabitants may be, in which there are not some articles, the production of which is peculiarly adapted either to the country, the climate, or the national industry, which may

be given in exchange for other articles of which they are destitute. "The coldest inhabited countries are often well supplied with wood and useful metals, and their seas abound with fish, particularly those kinds from which oil is obtained. In the temperate zones we find countries adapted for raising corn and pasturing oxen, sheep, and other cattle. At a certain latitude, the vine and the olive, and many kinds of delicious fruits, arrive at perfection. A little more warmth is required for raising cotton, and rearing the insect from whose labour silk is obtained. The warmest climates supply us with sugar, coffee, and spices. The cultivation of the tea-plant, though it does not require a very warm climate, has been hitherto confined to the eastern parts of Asia."* Were there no division of employments, and no diversity in the soil, climate, and productions of different places, there would be but little need of any interchange of commodities; and the magnitude of trade and commerce is determined almost entirely by the extent of the division of employments, and the diversity which has been now spoken of.

The facts that trade and commerce have everywhere enriched the nations by which they have been carried on, and that poverty has everywhere appeared where trade has been neglected, have been so evident as to force themselves on the assent of all men; yet how they enrich nations few appear to have understood. "While the supporters of the theory known by the name of the Mercantile System,' maintain that mercantile industry enriches a country by bringing into it a larger supply of the precious metals, the disciples of the French economists contend, that it can do so only by importing the raw produce of foreign states. Even recent writers, who have rejected the errors both of the mercantile and of the agricultural system, have not been eminently successful in solving this intricate problem in economical science, and in laying open the modus operandi by which commercial industry produces wealth."+ When industry collects the plants and animals which nature presents in a form adapted for use; when it bestows utility on materials which could not previously have administered to our wants; or when it multiplies or ameliorates the useful produc• Progress of Society, p. 282. + Col. Torrens, p. 152.

tions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms; its operation in producing wealth is sufficiently obvious. The effect is less apparent when it merely collects from the producers commodities already acquired, and, without making any alteration or improvement in them, only transports them from place to place, holds them in store until wanted, and exchanges them one against another.

The misapprehensions which have existed on the mode of operation of mercantile industry have arisen, partly, from considering wealth to be the only object of national industry, and the augmentation of value as the great end of its exertion. Whence it followed, since mercantile industry created no one object of wealth, that it was without any result in the augmentation of national wealth. Enough has been said already on the impropriety of limiting the subjects of economical inquiry to articles of wealth, and its end to the augmentation of their value. Taking another view of the subject, looking at industry as the instrument by which our various wants are supplied, and regarding it with a view to facilitate and abridge its labours, we shall see this otherwise obscure point sufficiently distinct; and no difficulty will then be found in duly appreciating the effects of mercantile industry, or in discovering the mode in which it contributes to multiply the productions of art, and to heighten their excellence and adaptation to our wants.

In the acquisition of the objects which are the end of the exertion of industry, there are two distinct kinds of operation requisite. These are, first, the work of their original acquisition or production, with their manipulation to fit them for use; and, secondly, the work of collecting them. from the different places and countries whence they are originally procured, transporting them from place to place, reserving them in store until wanted, and distributing them of proper sorts and in proper quantities to the parties by whom they are to be used or consumed. The first of these two kinds of operation forms the business of appropriative, agricultural, and manufacturing industry; the last is the work of distributive industry. The business of the latter is to effect a distribution of commodities better adapted to our wants and

desires than that which actually obtains in nature. It is matter of small moment that in the performance of this business there are no new objects of wealth created. When one man has more of food, and another more of clothing, than he has occasion for, and while the first is in want of more clothing, and the last of more food, than he possesses, it is an accommodation to both to be enabled with facility to exchange the surplus portion of the food of the one against the surplus portion of the clothing of the other. Every purchase and sale which takes place between individuals, whether of the same country or of different countries, though it be but an exchange of things in themselves perhaps equivalent, is advantageous to both persons. It is an exchange on the part of each, of a commodity in possession which is of less utility and value to the holder than to the purchaser, in exchange for that which, though of equal value to persons in general, was of less to the vender than to the purchaser. Whether or not the value of the articles be augmented, it is obvious, that the circumstances of both are improved, by parting with what existed in excess, or was little wanted, for what existed in a degree of scarcity, or was more wanted. Thus exchanges, though they add nothing to the magnitude or other properties of the objects themselves, yet in adding to their usefulness to the parties by whom they are possessed, or to the enjoyment they afford, act directly in the accomplishing of the only end for which the labour and sacrifice of the acquisition of things is undertaken and borne. The work that distributive industry performs constitutes part of the whole labour requisite to furnish our supply, and is equally indispensable with the other parts. It cannot therefore be accounted of subordinate importance in the estimate of national concerns; much less left out in the examination of national industry.

Upon mercantile industry devolves the office of purchasing and collecting from the several producers and manufacturers scattered all over the globe, all the materials, and all the finished or more or less finished productions, the peculiar produce of the industry of each, transporting them from places in which they are little wanted, and distributing them wherever