Thus history shows that restrictions are not so much theinventions of mere speculative minds, as the natural consequencesof the diversity of interests, and of the strivings of nationsafter independence or overpowering ascendency, and thus of nationalemulation and wars, and therefore that they cannot be dispensedwith until this conflict of national interests shall cease, inother words until all nations can be united under one and the samesystem of law.Thus the question as to whether, and how, thevarious nations can be brought into one united federation, and howthe decisions of law can be invoked in the place of military forceto determine the differences which arise between independentnations, has to be solved concurrently with the question howuniversal free trade can be established in the place of separatenational commercial systems.
The attempts which have been made by single nations tointroduce freedom of trade in face of a nation which is predominantin industry, wealth, and power, no less than distinguished for anexclusive tariff system -- as Portugal did in 1703, France in 1786,North America in 1786 and 1816, Russia from 1815 till 1821, and asGermany has done for centuries -- go to show us that in this waythe prosperity of individual nations is sacrificed, without benefitto mankind in general, solely for the enrichment of the predominantmanufacturing and commercial nation.Switzerland (as we hope toshow in the sequel) constitutes an exception, which proves just asmuch as it proves little for or against one or the other system.
Colbert appears to us not to have been the inventor of thatsystem which the Italians have named after him; for, as we haveseen, it was fully elaborated by the English long before his time.
Colbert only put in practice what France, if she wished to fulfilher destinies, was bound to carry out sooner or later.If Colbertis to be blamed at all, it can only be charged against him that heattempted to put into force under a despotic government a systemwhich could subsist only after a fundamental reform of thepolitical conditions.But against this reproach to Colbert's memoryit may very well be argued that, had his system been continued bywise princes and sagacious ministers, it would in all probabilityhave removed by means of reforms all those hindrances which stoodin the way of progress in manufactures, agriculture, and trade, aswell as of national freedom; and France would then have undergoneno revolution, but rather, impelled along the path of developmentby the reciprocating influences of industry and freedom, she mightfor the last century and a half have been successfully competingwith England in manufactures, in the promotion of her internaltrade, in foreign commerce, and in colonisation, as well as in herfisheries, her navigation, and her naval power.
Finally, history teaches us how nations which have been endowedby Nature with all resources which are requisite for the attainmentof the highest grade of wealth and power, may and must -- withouton that account forfeiting the end in view -- modify their systemsaccording to the measure of their own progress: in the first stage,adopting free trade with more advanced nations as a means ofraising themselves from a state of barbarism, and of makingadvances in agriculture; in the second stage, promoting the growthof manufactures, fisheries, navigation, and foreign trade by meansof commercial restrictions; and in the last stage, after reachingthe highest degree of wealth and power, by gradually reverting tothe principle of free trade and of unrestricted competition in thehome as well as in foreign markets, that so their agriculturists,manufacturers, and merchants may be preserved from indolence, andstimulated to retain the supremacy which they have acquired.In thefirst stage, we see Spain, Portugal, and the Kingdom of Naples; inthe second, Germany and the United States of North America; Franceapparently stands close upon the boundary line of the last stage;but Great Britain alone at the present time has actually reachedit.
End Second Book
The Theory