1821 Aug. 8

Rid Yourselves

Lett. 3 Barren Prohibitions

Remains for the possible subject matter of the barren prohibition,

importation from abroad. Of this, proportioned to the extent to which it is carried,

the result is not simply absence of profit, but positive loss. As the sum of imposing

the prohibitions on importation the article either is or is not subject to a tax: if

it is, whatever sum was the net produce of the tax, that is the sum lost: if it was

not yet taxed whatever is the net sum that might have been raised by the taxation of

it that again is the sum lost. When money /by a set of/ is thus thrown away, it must

have been under the notion of favouring the home production either of the same sort

of article or something that in this will it is supposed be consumed instead of it:

the tax /money/ thus as it were thrown away is a bounty to that same amount given

/attributed/ //applied/ to the home production of the one or the other article.

/Generally speaking/ A very extraordinary and forced state of things excepted, taxes

on importation are generally preferable to taxes on home production: for, generally

speaking, articles imported into a country, are with relation to that country

articles of luxury, articles belonging /not/ to the catalogue not of necessaries but

to that of superfluities: for forced and extraordinary must be the state of that

country which does not within itself afford to its inhabitants its means of

subsistence.

In