What is true as regards a new State,it will be said is not so of an old one.There was room in America for more producers and more consumers;but in a country where there were already more producers than were necessary,consumers only were wanted.Allow me to answer,that the only real consumers are those who produce on their part,because they alone can buy the produce of others,and that barren consumers can buy nothing except by the means of value created by producers.
It is probable that in the time of the reign of Queen Elizabeth,when England had not half the population of the present day,they had then discovered that there were more laborers than work.I desire no other proof of this than that very law which was then passed in favor of the poor,the result of which is one of the banes of England.Its principal object is to furnish work for the unfortunate who can find no employ.There was no employ in a country which since then has been able to furnish enough for a double and triple number of laborers.Whence comes it,Sir,whence comes it,however unfortunate may be the situation of Great Britain?Are more of divers articles sold in it,than in the days of Elizabeth?What can be the cause of this,if not that more is produced?One produces one thing,which he exchanges with his neighbour who produces another.Having more than enough for use,the population is increased,and still everybody has been better supplied.
It is the capability of production which makes the difference between a country and a desert.And the more a country produces,the more it is advanced,the more populous it is,and is the better provided.
This observation,which is self-evident,probably is not denied by you,but you complain of the conclusions I draw from it.
I have asserted that if there is an overstock,a superabundance of many kinds of goods,it is because other goods are not produced in sufficient quantities to be exchanged with the first.That if the producers of them could produce more,or others,the first would find the vent which now fails;in a word,that there is only too much produce of certain kinds because there is not enough of others,and you pretend that there may be a superabundance of all kinds at the same time,citing at the same time facts in your favor.M.de Sismondi had already opposed my doctrine,and I am very glad to quote here his most forcible expressions,in order not to deprive you,Sir,of any advantage that belongs to you,and that my answers may serve for both.
"Europe,"says this ingenious author,"is arrived at a point to have,in all its parts,an industry and a manufacture superior to its wants."He adds,that "the incumbrance which results from it begins to be felt in the rest of the world.""Examine the reports of commerce,the newspapers,rand the accounts of travellers,and every where will be seen proofs of that super-abundance of production beyond the consumption,of that manufacture,proportionate,not to the demand,but to the capital employed;of that activity of merchants which induces them to go in crowds to every new settlement,and which exposes them by turns to ruinous losses in every trade in which they expected profit.We have seen merchandise of all kinds,but particularly that of England,the great manufacturing power,abound in all the markets of Italy,in a proportion so far beyond the demand,as to compel the merchants,in order to realise part of their funds,to sell their goods at a loss of a quarter,or a third,instead of at a profit.
The tide of commerce turned away from Italy,found its way into Germany,Russia,and the Brazils,and very soon met with the same obstacles there.
"The last advices inform us of similar losses in new countries.In the month of August,1818,complaints were made at the Cape of Good Hope,that all the warehouses were filled with European goods,which were offered at a lower price than in Europe,but without finding a sale.In the month of June,at Calcutta,the complaints of commerce were of the same nature.
A strange phenomenon at first appeared --England sending cotton goods to India,and consequently succeeding in working at a lower price than the half-naked inhabitants of Hindostan,and reducing its workmen to a still more miserable state.
"But this whimsical turn giver to commerce did not last long.At present British productions arc cheaper in India than in England itself.In the month of May they were obliged to re-export from New-Holland,European goods which had been sent there in too great abundance.Buenos Ayres,New Grenada,and Chili,are already returning goods in the same way.
"Mr.Fearon's voyage to the United States,completed only in the spring of 1818,presents this spectacle in a still more striking point of view.
From one extremity to the other,of this vast and prosperous continent,there is not a city,nor a town,in which the quantity of goods offered for sale is not infinitely greater than the means of the buyers,notwithstanding the merchants endeavour to induce them,by very long credit,and every kind of facility in the payments,which they take in bills or in provisions of all kinds.
"No fact presents itself to us in a greater number of places,or under more varied shapes,than the disproportion of the means of consumption with the production --than the impossibility which producers find to give up their industry because it is declining,--and the certainty that their ranks are never thinned but by failures.How is it that philosophers will not see that which is evident to every vulgar eye?
"The error into which they have fallen is entirely owing to this false principle --that the production is the same thing as the revenue.Mr.
