2.They have also a large indirect effect in carrying instruments to orders of quicker return, by stimulating invention, and diminishing the propensity to servile imitation.(158) Every useful art is so connected with many, or with all others, that whatever renders its products more easily attainable, Facilitates the operations of a whole circle of arts, and introduces change -- the great agent in producing improvements -- under the most favorable form.-- Thus the recent improvements in the iron manufacture, have in Great Britain had no inconsiderable share in effecting the general improvement in the mechanical arts which has there taken place.Arts, too, as we have seen, when brought together pass into one another, and.thus also improvements in old arts are produced, or new arts generated.Even their very existence in any society gives a powerful stimulus to the ingenuity of its members.This has been well noticed by Mr.Hamilton: "To cherish and invigorate the activity of the human mind, by multiplying the objects of enterprise, is not among the least considerable of the expedients by which the wealth of a nation may be promoted.Even things in themselves not positively advantageous, sometimes become so, by their tendency to provoke exertion.Every new scene which is opened to the busy nature of man, to rouse and exert itself, is the addition of a new energy to the general stock of effort.
"The spirit of enterprise, useful and prolific as it is, must necessarily be contracted or expanded in proportion to the simplicity or variety of the occupations and productions which are to be found in a society.It must be less in a nation of mere cultivators, than in a nation of cultivators and merchants, less in a nation of cultivators and merchants, than in a nation of cultivators, artificers, and merchants." (159)3.The supply of any commodities which one society is in the habit of receiving from another and independent society, is liable to be suddenly interrupted by wars, or other causes.Hence arises great waste of the resources of the community.In many cases the whole system of instruments it possesses is at once disjointed, and it is long before the society recovers from the shock.The deficiency is at last supplied, it may be in a more effective manner than before, but in the interim there is great waste of Communities dependent on others for the supply of commodities for which they cannot readily find substitutes, must necessarily, every now and then, be subjected to great diminution of their funds from such causes.There are few expensive wars that do not furnish instances of it.It is probable that the absolute loss so caused to the present United States, from the interruption of their intercourse with Great Britain, at the commencement of the war of the revolution, equalled the whole expense of that war.The loss which many of the continental nations experienced from the sudden interruption to the supply of British manufactures, during the progress of the war against Napoleon, was also excessive.Great Britain herself, on the same occasion, suffered very severely from being at once deprived of the supply of materials necessary to many branches of her industry.Thus the cutting off the supply of Baltic and Norwegian timber, was for some years very sensibly felt by her.
It is no doubt true, that, on such occasions, the necessity which arises to procure substitutes for the commodities which are sufficient, largely stimulating ingenuity, often ultimately produces real benefit.Wars and similar interruptions to intercourse, as has been repeatedly observed, are, in fact, one of the chief agents by which the arts have been made to pass from country to country.But the same benefits might have been produced by the gradual operations of the legislator, without the sacrifice in this way required, and it is the business of reason, watching events, to separate the good from the evil, and to search for plans of obtaining the one, and avoiding the other.
But, while the legislator is called on to act, he is also called on to act cautiously, and to regulate his proceedings by an attentive consideration of the progress of events.He is never justifiable in attempting to transfer arts yielding utilities from foreign countries to his own, unless he have sufficient reason to conclude that they will ultimately lessen the cost of the commodities they produce, or are of such a nature, that the risk of waste to the stock of the community, from a sudden interruption to their importation from abroad, is sufficiently great to warrant the probable expense, both of the transfer and of maintaining the manufacture at home.
It is his business first to ascertain these points, and to regulate his proceedings accordingly.
