Page:The wealth of nations, volume 1.djvu/34

 they think by force of Laws to retain in their Country all the Gold and Silver which Trade brings in; and thereby expect to grow rich immediately: All which is a profound Fallacy" (p. 11, et seq.).

And on page 11: "What do these people want who cry out for more money?… Money is not their want but a Price for their Corn & Cattle, which they would sell but cannot." Summing up the whole of his principles in his postscript, he exclaims: "We may labor to hedge in the Cuckoo but in vain: for no People ever yet grew rich by Policies; but it is Peace, Industry and Freedom that brings Trade and Wealth, and nothing else." John Bellers wrote his "Proposals for raising a College of Industry" in 1696, in which he attacks the mercantilist system, and at the same time anticipates many doctrines of the classical economists.

Of all the opponents of the mercantile system none seem to have had so much sympathy with the toiling and suffering classes as Le Prestre de Yauban, Marshal of France. Yauban was probably a survival of the benevolent feudal baron who hated the progress of trade and the trading class, and, above all, the policy of the representative of that class, Colbert, the great financial minister of Louis XIV. He proposed that a tax, le dixme Royale, should be levied impartially on all incomes, to be paid in kind by the agriculturists, and in money by manufacturers and traders, all other taxes being abolished. It was probably only by his death, which occurred shortly after the publication of his book, "Le Dixme Royale," in 1707, that he escaped the vengeance of the powerful trading faction. His principal opinions may be gleaned from the following extracts: "… The real wealth of a people consists in an