Page:Life of Sir William Petty 1623 – 1687.djvu/215

 war of tariffs, which became accentuated after the Revolution of 1688, and continued till the middle of the present century.

In France a new tariff, from the adoption of which an epoch in the commercial history of Europe is to be dated, had been promulgated at the advice of Colbert, and the question debated in England was whether the main principles on which that tariff was founded were sound and to be imitated, or the reverse. Political leanings influenced personal judgments as much, perhaps, as any abstract views on the relative advantages and disadvantages of different systems of taxation, according as the sympathies of individuals favoured either the French or the Dutch alliance. The object of Colbert's tariff was by means of reduced duties on raw materials to encourage the manufacture and export of French goods, and to discourage the import of foreign manufactured articles by the imposition of heavy duties on their entry. The export of French corn was at the same time prohibited, under the mistaken idea that food would be thereby cheapened, and French manufactures be stimulated by increasing the purchasing power of money. The actual result was to reduce the production of French corn to the amount required for home consumption, without materially lowering the price. Underlying the whole of this complicated scheme was the idea that France would be more enriched by disposing of the surplus of her manufactured goods abroad for money, than through becoming 'tributary,' as the phrase went, to foreign countries, and sending abroad, in exchange for foreign manufactured goods, the agricultural produce of her soil, which, according to the views of the supporters of the system, ought to be consumed at home. Another and a sounder part of the system was the improvement of the means of internal communication by road and by water, the abolition of monopolies and exemptions, and the removal of the artificial barriers—so far as popular prejudice permitted—by which the unwisdom of man had aggravated the difficulties created by nature.

The mercantile portion of Colbert's policy reposed partly on the error that value—in other words, wealth—consisted in the precious metals coming into a country as the result of