Page:An Essay of the Impolicy of a Bounty on the Exportation of Grain (1804).djvu/45

Rh our manufactures should be got cheap, surely it is of importance that what is the great material of them all should be got cheap.

Why, if granting a bounty on exportation be so effectual a means of producing plenty and creating riches, do we not establish a bounty on the exportation of gold and silver? Why do we not grant a bounty on the exportation of sheep and oxen, butter and cheese, ale, porter, and spirits? Why not on tables and chairs, and all other articles of furniture? Nay, to go higher, why, in order to increase population, not grant a bounty on the exportation of men and women? Why not, especially, grant a bounty on the exportation of such classes as we have most need of, soldiers, for example, and sailors; As for politicians, we have such a supply of them, the very best in their kind, that we have no occasion for exportation, unless it be as a security against any decay in the numbers or breed.

We know of no person who has pretended to point out any defect in this argument of Dr. Smith, except a Mr. Mackie, who calls himself a farmer in East Lothian, in Scotland, and who has published two letters in the same volume with the performance of Mr. Dirom, The gross ignorance which those letters betray of some of the most important, and best established principles of the important subject on which the author has treated; might have exempted me from the task of exposing the futility of his objections, if it did not