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( 17 ) every foreign market were shut up against me without exception, even then would my 10,000l. be worth nothing? If there were no sugar to be bought, there is at any rate land to be improved. If a hundred pounds worth of sugar be more valuable than a hundred pounds worth of corn, butcher's meat, wine or oil, still corn, butcher's meat, wine and oil are not absolutely without their value. If article after article, you were driven out of every article of your foreign trade, the worst that could happen to you would be the being reduced to lay out so much more than otherwise you would have laid out in the improvement of your land. The supposition is imaginary and impossible: but if it were true, is there any thing in it so horrible?

Yes—it is quantify of capital, not extent of market, that determines the quantity of trade. Open a new market, you do not, unless by accident, encrease [sic] the sum of trade. Shut up an old market, you do not, unless by accident, or for the moment, diminish the sum of trade. In what case then is the sum of trade encreased by a new market? If the rate of clear profit upon the capital employed in the new trade is