American cottons were fifty per cent dearer than English goods of the same quality, a duty of fifty per cent on the imported commodity would be no tax upon the consumer. With the duty, he would buy the American or the English article at $1.50 a yard, and it would answer his only purpose, — would fully gratify his love of display. Without the duty, despising the cheaper article, he would purchase an English or French silk at $1.50 a yard, and would be no better off than in the other case; while the government would lose the whole proceeds of the tax, American manufactories would be stopped, and American workmen thrown out of employment.

I am no advocate of sumptuary laws for their own sake. But taxation itself being essential for the support of government, such an apportionment of the indirect taxes among various commodities as will discourage idle, wasteful, and luxurious consumption, is clearly expedient and just. For the aggregate amount expended all over the country for any article of luxury is increased by diminution of its price, and lessened by augmentation of that price. If, for instance, the number of diamonds should be so much increased, that the price should fall one half, people would purchase more than twice as many of them. There would then be no real saving to the community, but an actual loss; for the aggregate expenditure of the country in diamonds would be increased by the whole amount bought by those who should be more than enough to make up twice the former number of purchasers. On the other hand, double the price, and there would be less than half the former number of purchasers, and consequently a real saving to the community. If, then, we make the more costly manufactures for ourselves, instead of obtaining them from abroad, their price will be somewhat enhanced, there will be a smaller aggregate expenditure upon them, the purposes of luxury and ostentation will be equally well answered, and the prices obtained in foreign markets for our exports will be increased by the diminution of our imports, and to the full extent of that diminution. Silks, very fine cottons and woollens, expensive cutlery, articles of virtu and bijouterie, and the like, are necessarily consumed unproductively; we gain nothing, we even lose, by cheapening them. If the wages of labor can he kept up by raising the prices of such articles, we gain all round.

But our view of this subject would be incomplete, if some notice were not taken of the common arguments against laying restraints upon importation for the encouragement of domestic manufactures. Nearly all of them may be summed up in the often-quoted maxims, that, as a community is made up only of individuals, what is most for the interest of individuals is also best for the community; that individuals better than the government can determine what is most for their own advantage; and "that the maxim of buying in the cheapest market, and selling in the dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual dealings, is strictly applicable as the best rule for the trade of the whole nation."

That this argument may be pressed too far is very evident; for if individuals were always the best judges of what their own interest requires, many of them would refuse to pay any taxes for the support of government, and nearly all would claim a large reduction of the taxes which are severally imposed upon them. Comparatively few have sagacity and foresight enough to perceive for themselves the truth, however they may be disposed to yield a passive assent to it from custom and a respect for the authority of others, that government, which is throughout a system of repression and restraint, exists only for the common good; that in its administration, it is often necessary to sacrifice the interests of individuals to the general welfare; that private property, for instance, must often be taken for public uses; that sometimes persons must be taken away from their own occupations, and be compelled to serve on juries, or in the army or navy, or to testify in courts of justice, or to expose property and life to the hazards of war, perhaps of a war which they consider impolitic or unjust, and to do a thousand other things which they regard as vexatious and detrimental to their private concerns. The best government rests much more upon prescription and the tacit assent yielded only from the force of habit, than upon the intelligent convictions of its subjects. No one's consent is asked, as soon as he arrives at years of discretion, whether he will submit to the laws which he has had no hand in making; his submission is taken for granted, and he can withhold it only at the expense of imprisonment or exile. Peace and war must be made without consulting him, or asking how they will affect his private

welfare; often the best excuse that can be offered for making either is, that it will promote the interests of the greater number, though some must suffer.

But this remark is too general to meet the whole force of the argument for free trade, and is introduced here only to show that the alleged identity of individual with national interests, upon which this argument is based, is not a truth of universal application. We may gain a better view of the applicability of the maxim in this particular case, by considering one of Adam Smith's ingenious illustrations of it, which has been so frequently cited as to appear almost a truism.

"To give the monopoly of the home market," says Smith, "to the produce of domestic industry, in any particular art or manufacture, is in some measure to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, and must, in almost all cases, be either a useless or a hurtful regulation. If the produce of domestic can be bought there as cheaply as that of foreign industry, the regulation is evidently useless. If it cannot, it must generally be hurtful. It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to attempt to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own clothes, but employs a tailor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they may have some advantage over their neighbors, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or, what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they may have occasion for. What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom.” *

But this comparison between individuals and communities is often a faulty and deceptive one, and is particularly so in this case. Certainly it would be unwise in an individual to be his own weaver, tailor, carpenter, and blacksmith; he would thus lose all the advantages of a division of labor, and would not become skilled in any department. But this objection does

* Wealth of Nations, p. 200.

not hold in the case of a community, which has only a fictitious unity, and is really made up of many individuals, who may distribute among themselves all the employments which are requisite for the production of all the commodities that the society needs. No one person is thus required to practise more than one art, and the division of labor among these individuals is as perfect, as if the same number of trades were partitioned out among so many distinct communities. Still more; as communities are separated from each other often by broad tracts of sea or land, should each one confine its industry to the production of a single commodity, and purchase whatever else it needs from rival states, all its articles of consumption but one would come to it burdened with a considerable cost of transportation; and the sale of its own single product everywhere but at home would be impeded by an addition to its cost from the same cause. All the advantages of a division of labor result from a separation of employments among individuals, and become disadvantages in the case of distinct states, counties, and even towns. To one who is a blacksmith, it is no help, but rather a hinderance, that his nextdoor neighbor is a blacksmith also; he has thus a competitor in satisfying the wants of his own village, where every mechanic finds his best and most profitable customers; and as blacksmiths' work is heavy, he cannot carry his wares for sale even to the next county or town without lessening his profits. The inhabitants of every country town understand their own interests much better than Adam Smith did. Instead of forming themselves into a settlement composed exclusively of artisans of one trade, each community has its own mason, shoemaker, carpenter, shopkeeper, lawyer, doctor, and clergyman, and is thus not obliged to send a dozen or twenty miles in order to have a horse shod, a chimney built, a tooth pulled, or a marriage celebrated. A Yankee farmer with half a dozen

* I am not detailing imaginary cases. Mr. Rae, who lived a long time in Canada, says: "I knew two brothers whose farms or estates lay in one of the interior districts of that country, in the midst of its forests, and consequently at a considerable distance, perhaps twenty or thirty miles, from artificers of any description. Having each of them large families and productive farms, they had occasion for the services of various artificers, and had the means of paying them. Nevertheless, they very rarely employed them; almost every article they required was made by some one of the two families. As they were prudent and sagacious men, of which they produced the best

stout sons, acts upon the same principle, in not educating them all to his own employment, but making a mechanic of one, a merchant of another, a sailor of a third, sending a fourth to college, and keeping only one at home to be his own successor upon the farm. As all occupations are precarious, he knows that, by this course, he multiplies the chances of success, or reduces the chances of failure, for the whole family, besides suiting each member of it with an employment best adapted to his peculiar powers and inclination.

Adam Smith's illustrations are fallacious, because they are drawn from extreme cases, in regard to which no one would think of denying the correctness of the maxim, and are then applied as if it were correct in every instance, though the universality of the principle is the only point in question. Thus he argues: "By means of glasses, hot-beds, and hot-walls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine, too, can be made of them, at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making

evidence in the general success of their undertakings, and the prosperity of the settlement of which they were at the head, I think it likely that, in this also, they had turned their means to the best account. In fact, as they who are familiar with the details of beginning settlements in North America will admit, by this plan they in a great measure obviated the two chief drawbacks on the prosperity of new and remote settlements, - the excessive dearness of every article not produced there, from the great expense attending the transport of the raw produce and retransport of the manufactured goods, and the serious inconvenience arising from the difficulty, in such situations, of supplying, when necessary, unforeseen but pressing wants.

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Among other things which they got made on their own farms were boots, shoes, and leather. That they might get this done, they were at the pains and expense of sending one of the young men to some distance, to make himself sufficiently master of those trades for their purpose. They thought, however, that the cost they were thus put to was repaid, thrice over, by the saving of time and expense which it effected for them, in enabling them to make, out of leather which cost them very little, numerous articles that they must otherwise have been constantly sending for to a great distance, by roads that were almost impracticable a great part of the season." A Free-Trader, continues Mr. Rae, would certainly have remarked to these two heads of families: "You are in want, you say, of some pairs of shoes; surely, then, it is best for you to purchase them at the place where you can get them cheapest. But by the plan you are taking, of going to a great expense to have them made at home, they will certainly cost you more when made there, than if bought at the place where you have hitherto purchased shoes."

Any one can judge whether such advice would have been sound.