Page:Sir William Petty - A Study in English Economic Literature - 1894.djvu/73

74 This brings us to an important question of commercial policy. We have already seen how he condemns the prohibition on money export. In his "Quantulumcunque," a much later publication, he says: A merchant will carry goods or money according as the one or the other will purchase more commodities. The effect of prohibition on the wool trade he thinks of small use. The Hollanders have "gotten away our manufacture of cloth by becoming able to work with more art, to labour and fare harder, to take less freight, duties and insurance" (47). Fierce retaliation will do us more harm than good. We often buy corn from abroad. Why should we not turn our hands to tillage? By doing this we should increase the price of meat and encourage the fisheries; Less money would be spent on corn; there would be no gluts of wool; our idle hands would be employed in tillage and fishing; or why not draw over workmen from Holland, if their way be better, or send our men there to learn? Two general principles of great importance are in place here. As wise physicians do not tamper with their patients, but rather observe and comply with the motions of nature than contradict it with vehement administrations, the same care should be used in economics and politics (48). Imported goods need not be prohibited until they much exceed our exportations. In the "Anatomy of Ireland" (356), he makes a more explicit statement of his views. "Why should we forbid the use of any foreign commodity which our own hands and country cannot produce, when we can employ our spare hands upon such exportable commodities as will purchase the same, and more?"

We have seen the position he took on the prohibition