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[579]
To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers may at
first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a
project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose
government is influenced by shopkeepers. Such statesmen, and such statesmen only, are
capable of fancying that they will find some advantage in employing the blood and treasure
of their fellow-citizens to found and maintain such an empire. Say to a shopkeeper,
"Buy me a good estate, and I shall always buy my clothes at your shop, even though I
should pay somewhat dearer than what I can have them for at other shops"; and you
will not find him very forward to embrace your proposal. But should any other person buy
you such an estate, the shopkeeper would be much obliged to your
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benefactor if he would
enjoin you to buy all your clothes at his shop. England purchased for some of her
subjects, who found themselves uneasy at home, a great estate in a distant country. The
price, indeed, was very small, and instead of thirty years' purchase, the ordinary price
of land in the present times, it amounted to little more than the expense of the different
equipments which made the first discovery, reconnoitered the coast, and took a fictitious
possession of the country. The land was good and of great extent, and the cultivators
having plenty of good ground to work upon, and being for some time at liberty to sell
their produce where they pleased, became in the course of little more than thirty or forty
years (between 1620 and 1660) so numerous and thriving a people that the shopkeepers and
other traders of England wished to secure to themselves the monopoly of their custom.
Without pretending, therefore, that they had paid any part, either of the original
purchase-money, or of the subsequent expense of improvement, they petitioned the
Parliament that the cultivators of America might for the future be confined to their shop;
first, for buying all the goods which they wanted from Europe; and, secondly, for selling
all such parts of their own produce as those traders might find it convenient to buy. For
they did not find it convenient to buy every part of it. Some parts of it imported into
England might have interfered with some of the trades which they themselves carried on at
home. Those particular parts of it, therefore, they were willing that the colonists should
sell where they could- the farther off the better; and upon that account purposed that
their market should be confined to the countries south of Cape Finisterre. A clause in the
famous Act of Navigation established this truly shopkeeper proposal into a law.
The maintenance of this monopoly has hitherto been the principal, or more properly
perhaps the sole end and purpose of the dominion which Great Britain assumes over her
colonies. In the exclusive trade, it is supposed, consists the great advantage of
provinces, which have never yet afforded either revenue or military force for the support
of the civil government, or the defence of the mother country. The monopoly is the
principal badge of their dependency, and it is the sole fruit which has hitherto been
gathered from that dependency. Whatever expense Great Britain has hitherto laid out in
maintaining this dependency has really been laid out in order to support this monopoly.
The expense of the ordinary peace establishment of the colonies amounted, before the
commencement of the present disturbances, to the pay of twenty regiments of foot; to the
expense of the artillery, stores, and extraordinary provisions with
[581]
which it was necessary
to supply them; and to the expense of a very considerable naval force which was constantly
kept up, in order to guard, from the smuggling vessels of other nations, the immense coast
of North America, and that of our West Indian islands. The whole expense of this peace
establishment was a charge upon the revenue of Great Britain, and was, at the same time,
the smallest part of what the dominion of the colonies has cost the mother country. If we
would know the amount of the whole, we must add to the annual expense of this peace
establishment the interest of the sums which, in consequence of her considering her
colonies as provinces subject to her dominion, Great Britain has upon different occasions
laid out upon their defence. We must add to it, in particular, the whole expense of the
late war, and a great part of that of the war which preceded it. The late war was
altogether a colony quarrel, and the whole expense of it, in whatever part of the world it
may have been laid out, whether in Germany or the East Indies, ought justly to be stated
to the account of the colonies. It amounted to more than ninety millions sterling,
including not only the new debt which was contracted, but the two shillings in the pound
additional land tax, and the sums which were every year borrowed from the sinking fund.
The Spanish war, which began in 1739, was principally a colony quarrel. Its principal
object was to prevent the search of the colony ships which carried on a contraband trade
with the Spanish Main. This whole expense is, in reality, a bounty which has been given in
order to support a monopoly. The pretended purpose of it was to encourage the
manufactures, and to increase the commerce of Great Britain. But its real effect has been
to raise the rate of mercantile profit, and to enable our merchants to turn into a branch
of trade, of which the returns are more slow and distant than those of the greater part of
other trades, a greater proportion of their capital than they otherwise would have done;
two events which, if a bounty could have prevented, it might perhaps have been very well
worth while to give such a bounty.
Under the present system of management, therefore, Great Britain derives nothing but
loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies.
To propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her
colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to
make peace and war as they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure as never
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was, and never will be adopted, by any nation in the world. No nation ever voluntarily
gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome soever it might be to govern it, and
how small soever the revenue which it afforded might be in proportion to the expense which
it occasioned. Such sacrifices, though they might frequently be agreeable to the interest,
are always mortifying to the pride of every nation, and what is perhaps of still greater
consequence, they are always contrary to the private interest of the governing part of it,
who would thereby be deprived of the disposal of many places of trust and profit, of many
opportunities of acquiring wealth and distinction, which the possession of the most
turbulent, and, to the great body of the people, the most unprofitable province seldom
fails to afford. The most visionary enthusiast would scarce be capable of proposing such a
measure with any serious hopes at least of its ever being adopted. If it was adopted,
however, Great Britain would not only be immediately freed from the whole annual expense
of the peace establishment of the colonies, but might settle with them such a treaty of
commerce as would effectually secure to her a free trade, more advantageous to the great
body of the people, though less so to the merchants, than the monopoly which she at
present enjoys. By thus parting good friends, the natural affection of the colonies to the
mother country which, perhaps, our late dissensions have well nigh extinguished, would
quickly revive. It might dispose them not only to respect, for whole centuries together,
that treaty of commerce which they had concluded with us at parting, but to favour us in
war as well as in trade, and, instead of turbulent and factious subjects, to become our
most faithful, affectionate, and generous allies; and the same sort of parental affection
on the one side, and filial respect on the other, might revive between Great Britain and
her colonies, which used to subsist between those of ancient Greece and the mother city
from which they descended.
In order to render any province advantageous to the empire to which it belongs, it
ought to afford, in time of peace, a revenue to the public sufficient not only for
defraying the whole expense of its own peace establishment, but for contributing its
proportion to the support of the general government of the empire. Every province
necessarily contributes, more or less, to increase the expense of that general government.
If any particular province, therefore, does not contribute its share towards defraying
this expense, an unequal burden must be thrown upon some other part of the empire. The
extraordinary revenue, too, which every province affords to the public in time of war,
ought, from parity of reason, to bear the same proportion to the extraordinary revenue of
the whole empire which its ordinary
[583]
revenue does in time of peace. That neither the
ordinary nor extraordinary revenue which Great Britain derives from her colonies, bears
this proportion to the whole revenue of the British empire, will readily be allowed. The
monopoly, it has been supposed, indeed, by increasing the private revenue of the people of
Great Britain, and thereby enabling them to pay greater taxes, compensates the deficiency
of the public revenue of the colonies. But this monopoly, I have endeavoured to show,
though a very grievous tax upon the colonies, and though it may increase the revenue of a
particular order of men in Great Britain, diminishes instead of increasing that of the
great body of the people; and consequently diminishes instead of increasing the ability of
the great body of the people to pay taxes. The men, too, whose revenue the monopoly
increases, constitute a particular order, which it is both absolutely impossible to tax
beyond the proportion of other orders, and extremely impolitic even to attempt to tax
beyond that proportion, as I shall endeavour to show in the following book. No particular
resource, therefore, can be drawn from this particular order.
Source:
Bibliomania: www.bibliomania.com/NonFiction/Smith/Wealth/index.html
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