Page:England under free trade.djvu/24

 From this sum, however, must be deducted what we may have to pay the foreigner on so much of our foreign commerce as he carries for us, and for the balance between what we have to pay him, and what we have to receive from him, in respect of supplies, port dues, &c., and if for these items we take off, roughly, 14 millions, there remains no millions to receive from the foreigner annually by way of interest on loans, and for work and labour done for him. In other words, before we have to send away a pound's worth of goods with the view of getting a pound's worth in exchange, we have to receive in some shape or other from the foreigner no less a sum annually than 110 millions sterling. In the name of political economy and common sense, how can this be a bad thing for this country?

Anyhow, and after making all possible deductions, you must see that we can import over 100 millions worth of commodities without trenching on our capital, and that is the great point. But, it may be asked, why do we take goods and not cash?

The answer to that is, that in some years we take part goods, and part cash, some years all goods, never all cash. To be paid entirely in cash is about the last thing we should want, but if we did want it, we could not get it; 100 millions loose cash in the world does not exist.

But let us suppose for a moment that we could get cash by some impossible process. What should we do with it? We could not eat it. We should not want to pile it up in vaults. We should have to send it abroad again in exchange for commodities, and, if in the end you have to do that, you may as well take commodities at once, and so save the expense and loss of two voyages of your cash. The fact is, that it is only in commodities that one nation can discharge the bulk of its debts to another nation, and that if the world owes us money, and makes us its carrier and its general merchant, we must take payment in commodities. And thus you see, at a stroke we get rid of that bugbear to some people, the thing commonly called the Balance of Trade, and which, as commonly understood, is a fallacious and misleading expression.