Page:Works of the Late Doctor Benjamin Franklin (1793).djvu/297

287 exceſs of people who cannot get land want employment. The manufacture of ſilk, they ſay, is natural in France, as that of cloth in England, becauſe each country produces in plenty the firſt material: but if England will have a manufacture of ſilk as well as that of cloth, and France of cloth as well, as that of ſilk, theſe unnatural operations muſt be ſupported by mutual prohibitions, or high duties on the importation of each other's goods; by which means the workmen are enabled to tax the home conſumer by greater prices, while the higher wages they receive make them neither happier nor richer, ſince they only drink more and work leſs. Therefore the governments in America do nothing to encourage ſuch projects. The people, by this means, are not impoſed on either by the merchant or mechanic: if the merchant demands too much profit on imported ſhoes, they buy of the ſhoemaker; and if he aſks too high a price, they take them of the merchant: thus the two profeſſions are checks on each other. The ſhoemaker, however, has, on the whole, a conſiderable profit upon his labour in America, beyond what he had in Europe, as he can add to his price a ſum nearly equal to all the expences of freight and commiſſion, riſque or inſurance, &c. neceſſarily charged by the merchant. And the caſe is the ſame with the workmen in every other mechanic art. Hence it is, that artiſans generally live better and more eaſily in America than in Europe; and ſuch as are good œconomiſts make a comfortable proviſion for age, and for their children. Such may, therefore, remove with advantage to America.

In the old long-ſettled countries of Europe, all arts, trades, profeſſions, farms, &c. are ſo full, that it is difficult for a poor man who has children to place them where they may gain, or learn to