OUR MANUFACTURING SUPERIORITY NOT NECESSARY TO OUR WITH TO SUPPLY
THE FOREIGN MARKET WITH MANUFACTURES.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE SPECTATOR.
Sat—One objection which has been urged against a free trade in corn, which, whether a sound one or not is at least perfectly intelligible, is, that it is not desirable that one nation should be dependent on another for a supply of the first necessary of life. Into the discussion of this question I do not propose to enter ; but, with your permission, I will avail myself of your journal to make a few remarks on another opinion which appears to have been lately promul- gated respecting the policy of restrictions on the importation of corn. I allude to the alleged necessity of this country always preserving its manufacturing superiority over other countries in order that we should continue to produce manufactures for the foreign market ; which said superiority being, as all must allow, very uncertain, we are told that the policy of giving an additional impe- tus to our manufacturing system by admitting foreign corn, duty-free, is at least a doubtful one, seeing that by so doing we shall only be increasing the number of that part of our population whose employment, and consequently their means of subsistence, depend on so precarious a circumstance as the con- tinued manufacturing superiority of Great Britain. Now very little reflection will serve to convince us, that in the case of two or more countries carrying on an interchange of commodities by barter, so far from it being necessary that any one of these countries should produce the commo- \ies it exports with a less expenditure of labour than the countries to which `it ports them, in order that it may carry on an advantageous trade with such cy,%, con Aries, in fact it may not be able to produce any one commodity with as small an expenditure of labour as any one country in the world, and yet may carry on an advantageous trade with other countries. For instance, it is per- fectly obvious, if one hundred yards of cloth (of a given quality) exchange for forty quarters of W beat in England. and the same quantity and quality of cloth exchange for fifty quarters of Wheat in Belgium, that England will em- ploy its labour to greater advantage in fabricating cloth to exchange for Bel- gian corn, than if it employed its labour directly on the culture of ea rn for itself. In this instance it would obtain fifty quarters of wheat (subject to a deduction for freight and duties) instead of forty; nor will this conclusion he vitiated although it was true that twice as much labour was employed in the fabrication of cloth in England as in Belgium. If this were the case, we may be sure that more than twice as much labour would be expended in the production of a given quantity of corn in England than in Belgium, because, in the same country, it is the relative quantities of labour which have been expended in the production of commodities which determine the proportions in which they ex- change for one another : fifty quarters of Belgian corn, produced by the same expenditure of labour as one hundred yards of Belgian cloth and therefore equal to it in exchangeable value, procurable also, of course, by one hundred yards of English cloth of the same quality, on which, by the supposition, twice as much labour has been expended in the production, are produced by less than half the quantity of labour employed in the culture of fifty quarters of English corn, forty quarters of English corn being produced by the same expenditure of labour as one hundred yards of British cloth. In this tedious and rather clumsy illustration of a well-established position in political economy, I have confined myself to the consideration of a commerce carried on by barter ; and I think it satisfactorily shows, in a country carrying on such a commerce, there is no necessity that it should produce the commo- dities which it exports with a less expenditure of labour than is expended in the production of the same commodities in the country to which it exports them, in order that the trade may be an advantageous one; and we shall find, if we complicate the question by introducing into it the consideration of money, the conclusion will not require to be altered or modified. Whatever the circum- stances may be, (not that I think the researches of Mr. Ricenro and other writers leave us in doubt on this point,) which determine the prices of commo- dities, that is, their exchangeable value in money, if in the instance I have adduced, the price of cloth in England and Belgium be the same, and if there be no other commodity cheaper in England than in Belgium, money, (the freight on it being less than on an equivalent value in cloth or any other com- modity the price of which might be as low in England as in Belgium, besides not being subject to any import-duties,) will be exported from England for Belgian corn ; by which means, (if any taith at all is to be put in our writers on money, or rather I should say, in the deductions of reason confirmed by expe- rience,) the general scale of prices of all commodities in England will be some- what lowered, and in Belgium somewhat elevated. By the export of money, and the consequent fall of prices in England, cloth would become cheaper in England than in Belgium; and when the difference in price became so great as to be more than equal to the greater expenses, in the shape of freight and duties, incurred in the export of English cloth to Belgium, than in the export of the sum of money which could be obtained for the cloth in England, cloth will be imported in preference to money.
At this stage of the argument an objecter will perhaps say, " You have been seeking to establish a conclusion which I do not deny : what I contend is, that unless England can sell its cloth at a lower price than Belgium, or at least as low a price, the manufacture of cloth for the foreign market must cease." In reply, I would say, that in the case I have supposed, were the price of cloth in
England no lower than the price in Belgium, or even higher, we should soon be enabled to export cloth to Belgium for the purchase of corn with greater ad- vantage than money, since the very circumstance of money leaving the country, occasioning a fall in the price of all commodities in England, would render it our interest to export our cheapened cloth. Indeed, were the export of money from England prohibited, and were the prohibition capable of being enforced, English cloth, though its price were higher than Belgian cloth, might with advantage be taken to Belgium to be bartered there for Belgian corn. In short, all that is necessary to constitute an advantageous trade between one country and another, is that the article exported, whether it be money or
any other commodity, shall be able to buy (subject to a deduction for freight
and duties) a greater quantity of some other article in the foreign country than in the country from which the export is made. The manufacturing system of
this country cannot be destroyed until we are able to purchase a greater quantity of foreign commodities by the export of corn than by manfactures. This is the sort of superiority over the foreign manufacturer that our native manufacturer requires.
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