Henry Carey

Excerpts from The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing & Commercial (1851)

2/13 IV - How Protection Tends to Increase Production and Consumption

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A great error exists in the impression now very commonly entertained in regard to national division of labour, and which owes its origin to the English school of political economists, whose system is throughout based upon the idea of making England ``the workshop of the world,'' than which nothing could be less natural. By that school it is taught that some nations are fitted for manufactures and others for the labours of agriculture, and that the latter are largely benefited by being compelled to employ themselves in the one pursuit, making all their exchanges at a distance, thus contributing their share to the maintenance of the system of ``ships, colonies, and commerce.'' The whole basis of their system is and , and not production, yet neither makes any addition to the amount of things to be exchanged. It is the great boast of their system that the exchangers are so numerous and the producers so few, and the more rapid the increase in the proportion which the former bear to the latter, the more rapid is supposed to be the advance toward perfect prosperity. Converters and exchangers, however, must live, and they must live out of the labour of others: and if three, five, or ten persons are to live on the product of one, it must follow that all will obtain but a small allowance of the necessaries or comforts of life.... (p. 46)

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