iends or by the
opponents of the present restrictive system. The wine-growers of France,
who imagine that free trade would relieve their distress by raising the
price of their wine, might not improbably find that price actually
lowered. On the other hand, our silk manufacturers would be surprised if
they were told that the free admission of our cottons and hardware into
the French market, would endanger _their_ branch of manufacture: yet
such might very possibly be the effect. France, it is likely, could most
advantageously pay us in silks for a portion of the large amount of
cottons and hardware which we should sell to her; and though our silk
manufacturers may now be able to compete advantageously, in some
branches of the manufacture, with their French rivals, it by no means
follows that they could do so when the efflux of money from France, and
its influx into England, had lowered the price of silk goods in the
French market, and increased all the expenses of production here.

On the whole, England probably, of all the countries of Europe, draws to
herself the largest share of the gains of international commerce:
because her exportable articles are in universal demand, and are of such
a kind that the demand increases rapidly as the price falls. Countries
which export food, have the former advantage, but not the latter. But
our own colonies, and the countries which supply us with the materials
of our manufactures, maintain a hard struggle with us for an equal share
of the advantages of their trade; for _their_ exports are also of a kind
for which there exists a most extensive demand here, and a demand
capable of almost indefinite extension by a fall of price. Contrary,
therefore, to common opinion, it is probable that our trade with the
colonies, and with the countries which send us the raw materials of our
national industry, is not more but less advantageous to us, in
proportion to its extent, than our trade with the continent of Europe.
We mean in respect to the mere amount of the return to the labour and
capital of the country; considered abstractedly from the usefulness or
agreeableness of the particular articles on which the receivers may
choose to expend it.

NOTES:

[1] _Elements of Political Economy_, by James Mill, Esq., 3rd
edit., pp. 120-1.

[2] The figures used are of course arbitrary, having no
reference to any existing prices.

[3] We have not deemed it necessary to enter minutely into all
the c