for the produce
of other countries, and thus no more foreign trade could exist, than in
a poor country which had no surplus produce. It is therefore essential
that every country should bear in mind, in adopting a system of
protection to manufactures or other produce, that they thereby
effectually debar themselves from all foreign trade to neutral countries
in such articles; for if they require high duties at home to protect
them from the produce of other countries, which could only come at
considerable expense to compete with them at home, how can they
withstand that competition when they meet on the same terms in every
respect in a neutral market? How effectually has France stayed her
export linen trade by raising the duties and the price of linen yarn,
and by that act, intended as a blow to English trade, given the linen
manufacturers of this country a greater advantage over France in the
markets of the world than ever. How idle are the efforts of the Belgian
government to establish depots and factories for the sale of their
manufactures in St Thomas add other places, while the manufacturers in
Ghent are only able to maintain their home trade, by high protective
duties, against English, French, and German goods, and still cry out for
greater protection!

It is, however, abundantly plain, that the state of a country above
described could not long exist, when industry and intelligence were in
the course of producing wealth; for if there be one law in nature more
distinct than another, it is, that while the productions of every
country are less or more limited to particular things, the wants of man
extend to every possible variety of products over the whole world, as
soon as his means can command them. As a country advances in wealth, it
will have more and more surplus produce, which under wise laws would
always consist of such things as it could produce with greatest facility
and profit, whether from the loom or the soil. This surplus produce
would be exchanged for the productions of other climates, but it must be
quite clear, as soon as we arrive at this stage, that the power of the
law to protect price altogether ceases. The surplus exported must sell
in the markets of the world, in competition with the same article
produced under the cheapest circumstances, and that article in the home
market can command only the same price.

Thus the whole attempt to protect all interests equally would
immediately fail; every arti