NO. II - Philadelphia, April 7, 1819. Further review of Adam Smith's maxims. Their pernicious consequences admitted by himself. Proposed remedy in collateral manufactures and country labour. Futility of the proposition. Ignorance of the nobility, country gentlemen and merchants, asserted by Dr. Smith. Position utterly unfounded.

Summary

Dr. Smith's maxim, discussed in our first number, inevitably involves in its consequences, as we have proved, the destruction of those manufacturing establishments, which produce articles that can be purchased “cheaper abroad than they can be made at home;” and its necessary result is, to deprive those engaged in them of employment. The doctor, after having inflicted a deadly wound by this maxim, undertakes to provide a sovereign and infallible remedy for the evil, which, to do him and his system justice, we shall exhibit in his own words:—It remains to examine how far the prescription applies a remedy to the evil.

1. I. “Though a number of people should, by restoring the freedom of trade, be thrown all at once out of their ordinary employment, and common method of subsistence, it would by no means follow, that they would thereby be deprived either of employment or subsistence.”

2. II. “To the greater part of manufactures, there are other collateral manufactures of so familiar a nature, that a workman can easily transfer his industry from one to the other.

3. III. “The greater part of such workmen, too, are occasionally employed in country labour.

4. IV. “The stock, which employed them in a particular manufacture before, will still remain in the country, to employ an equal number of people in some other way.