A nation imports from a distance a manufactured commodity, which it is granted it could make as cheap, or cheaper, at home, were the manufacture introduced there.To introduce the manufacture is, however, too expensive a project to be carried into effect by any private individual.The whole society might do so, through the expenditure for a few years of a portion of its revenue, much less than what an equal number of years succeeding them will return to it in the diminished cost of the article.He, or they, who legislate for the society, embrace the apparent benefit, and, by means of a small expenditure, effect an increase of the productive powers of the community; that is, they give those powers the capability of producing the same quantity of an article with less expense, which certainly must be allowed to be an increase of them.In this the legislator acts in a manner that would be accounted prudence in a private person, who conducted any system of industry for his own emolument: in a planter; for instance, who owned and managed a West India estate.We should undoubtedly approve of such a person's being at considerable expense, in instructing his overseers and negroes, in any improved mode of conducting the business of the plantation, if this improvement more than proportionably augmented his revenue.Neither have the proceedings of legislators, in many cases parallel in principle to this, been ever objected to.It sometimes happens, for instance, that those engaged in cultivating the ground know that they can procure seeds of plants, or races of animals, at a distance, better fitted for their purposes than those they have at home.If the expense of procuring them is small, and such as will be remunerated to an individual by the gain, individuals send for such seeds and animals.If it is greater, they sometimes club in societies for the purpose.If it be too great for these societies, the legislator aids them in their scheme, or carries it into effect himself.
In this way it was, that, it being thought that the culture of the bread fruit tree, a plant indigenous to the Pacific Ocean, could it be introduced into our West India Islands, would be of advantage to them, government were at the expense of sending more than one vessel, on that long voyage, in order to transport the plant there.No one did, or could object, to the outlay of a portion of the public revenue for a purpose so laudable.
In this instance, it will be allowed by all, that it would have been as absurd to have waited in expectation that some individual should find, or should imagine he would find it for his own private advantage to undertake so expensive a scheme, as it would be to complain of the comparatively trifling expenditure of the common funds, which the accomplishment of this project conducive to the common good required.But the expenditure of a certain amount of national revenue, for the purpose of transporting an useful art from a distant country, bears, surely, a close analogy to a similar expenditure, for the purpose of transporting an useful plant.If the one be praiseworthy, the other can scarce deserve the censure that has been heaped on it.
Our author further observes: "The natural advantages which one country has over another, in producing particular commodities are sometimes so great that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them." And, as an instance, he gives the project of raising grapes, for the purpose of making wine, in Scotland.
Extreme cases are useful, but, to be so, they should be correctly put.
The main question in dispute is, whether or not it is proper to introduce a manufacture from abroad, by the aid of the legislator, which, when so introduced, will furnish a commodity for home consumption at as low, or at a lower price, than it can be bought for in the foreign country.The supposed case of a commodity which, if the manufacture of it be introduced at home, will cost thirty times more, or a thirtieth, or three hundredth part more there than abroad, can have nothing to do with the determination of such a question.
"Whether the advantages which one country has over another be natural or acquired, is in this respect of no consequence." On the contrary, in my opinion, it is of the greatest consequence, and, for this very reason, that it is only "as long as the one country has those advantages, and the other wants them, that it will be more advantageous for the latter rather to buy of the former than to make." Now natural advantages cannot be procured by any expenditure of revenue or capital, but acquired advantages may often be got by means of a very small expenditure.One country cannot, at any purchase, acquire the soil, the climate, the commodiousness of situation for conducting trade, or any of the other natural advantages which another country possesses; were it so, the price would be very large that would not be willingly paid for them.But one country can often with ease, and at a trifling expense, acquire the practical skill and the knowledge of particular arts and manufactures which another possesses, and, by doing so, gain the advantage of procuring for itself the products of this skill and knowledge at home, instead of having to go abroad for them.In the passage quoted, natural advantages and acquired are reckoned equivalents, and so undoubtedly they are.They are both valuable on account of the products they yield to human labor.But they differ in this, that the latter can be transferred from one country to another, the former cannot.Could Scotland acquire the sunny skies and more genial climate of France, its hills might be covered with vineyards, instead of heather, and its inhabitants might procure many commodities at a fourth of the price which they now cost them.No one would object to a considerable expenditure to acquire so great an advantage.
