No foreign war of great expense or duration could conveniently be carried on by the exportation of the rude produce of the soil.The expense of sending such a quantity of it to a foreign country as might purchase the pay and provisions of an army would be too great.Few countries produce much more rude produce than what is sufficient for the subsistence of their own inhabitants.To send abroad any great quantity of it, therefore, would be to send abroad a part of the necessary subsistence of the people.It is otherwise with the exportation of manufactures.
The maintenance of the people employed in them is kept at home, and only the surplus part of their work is exported.Mr.Hume frequently takes notice of the inability of the ancient kings of England to carry on, without interruption, any foreign war of long duration.The English, in those days, had nothing wherewithal to purchase the pay and provisions of their armies in foreign countries, but either the rude produce of the soil, of which no considerable part could be spared from the home consumption, or a few manufactures of the coarsest kind, of which, as well as of the rude produce, the transportation was too expensive.This inability did not arise from the want of money, but of the finer and more improved manufactures.Buying and selling was transacted by means of money in England then as well as now.The quantity of circulating money must have borne the same proportion to the number and value of purchases and sales usually transacted at that time, which it does to those transacted at present; or rather it must have borne a greater proportion, because there was then no paper, which now occupies a great part of the employment of gold and silver.Among nations to whom commerce and manufactures are little known, the sovereign, upon extraordinary occasions, can seldom draw any considerable aid from his subjects, for reasons which shall be explained hereafter.It is in such countries, therefore, that he generally endeavours to accumulate a treasure, as the only resource against such emergencies.Independent of this necessity, he is in such a situation naturally disposed to the parsimony requisite for accumulation.In that simple state, the expense even of a sovereign is not directed by the vanity which delights in the gaudy finery of a court, but is employed in bounty to his tenants, and hospitality to his retainers.But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.Every Tartar chief, accordingly, has a treasure.The treasures of Mazepa, chief of the Cossacs in the Ukraine, the famous ally of Charles the XII, are said to have been very great.The French kings of the Merovingian race all had treasures.When they divided their kingdom among their different children, they divided their treasure too.The Saxon princes, and the first kings after the Conquest, seem likewise to have accumulated treasures.The first exploit of every new reign was commonly to seize the treasure of the preceding king, as the most essential measure for securing the succession.The sovereigns of improved and commercial countries are not under the same necessity of accumulating treasures, because they can generally draw from their subjects extraordinary aids upon extraordinary occasions.They are likewise less disposed to do so.They naturally, perhaps necessarily, follow the mode of the times, and their expense comes to be regulated by the same extravagant vanity which directs that of all the other great proprietors in their dominions.The insignificant pageantry of their court becomes every day more brilliant, and the expense of it not only prevents accumulation, but frequently encroaches upon the funds destined for more necessary expenses.What Dercyllidas said of the court of Persia may be applied to that of several European princes, that he saw there much splendour but little strength, and many servants but few soldiers.
The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.Between whatever places foreign trade is carried on, they all of them derive two distinct benefits from it.It carries out that surplus part of the produce of their land and labour for which there is no demand among them, and brings back in return for it something else for which there is a demand.It gives a value to their superfluities, by exchanging them for something else, which may satisfy a part of their wants, and increase their enjoyments.By means of it the narrowness of the home market does not hinder the division of labour in any particular branch of art or manufacture from being carried to the highest perfection.By opening a more extensive market for whatever part of the produce of their labour may exceed the home consumption, it encourages them to improve its productive powers, and to augment its annual produce to the utmost, and thereby to increase the real revenue and wealth of the society.These great and important services foreign trade is continually occupied in performing to all the different countries between which it is carried on.They all derive great benefit from it, though that in which the merchant resides generally derives the greatest, as he is generally more employed in supplying the wants, and carrying out the superfluities of his own, than of any other particular country.To import the gold and silver which may be wanted into the countries which have no mines is, no doubt, a part of the business of foreign commerce.It is, however, a most insignificant part of it.A country which carried on foreign trade merely upon this account could scarce have occasion to freight a ship in a century.
