Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: to west, would find every where over the whole of these islands, a neat habitation, within a mile, or within half a mile of another. III. MANUFACTURES. In contradiction to the doctrine held by the Economists, that the wealth and revenue of a state arises solely from industry applied to the fertility of the soil, it is maintained, that all the wealth and revenue of a state arises from its manufactures, commerce, and the balance of trade, in the exchange of one commodity for another. That is, either in the exchange of raw materials, the native produce of the country, for manufactured goods, or in that of one manufacture of which it possesses a superfluity, for others which it may want, and has not of its own. It may be sometimes more advantageous to export raw materials for manufactures, or even to receive the same raw materials back in a manufactured state, than work them up at home; and this must always be the case, when they cannot be manufactured at home, sufficiently cheap to enable them to be sold in foreign markets on a par with those of the neighbouring states. On the contrary, it will be advantageous to purchase raw materials from a foreign country, and return them manufactured, whenever the expense of manufacturing is lower than in the country of their natural produce. Without entering into the very ingenious argumerits, by which the writers on these subjects have supported their different systems, there seems to be no doubt but that the export of the superabundant produce of the land, of the fisheries, and of the mines, are all of them sources of clear gain to the state; Nor until the cultivation of the land and the fisheries are carried to the greatest profit, 6f which they are capable, can it be doubted, but that it is much better to purchase with these produc…
