A View of the Causes of our Late Prosperity and of our Present Distress

I came across a Google Book titled A View of the Causes of our Late Prosperity, and of our Present Distress; and of the Means which have Been Proposed for Our Relief. The book is from 1816, and the author unknown.

The following, from page 24 of that book, may be of interest:

 

Of Checks to the Increase of Revenue by
means of Bounties and Prohibitions.

Dr. Adam Smith observes, that it has been the great object of political economy to diminish the importation of foreign goods for home consumption, and to increase as much as possible the exportation of the produce of domestic industry; and that its two great engines for enriching the country have been restraints upon importation, and encouragements to exportation, by means of high duties, or prohibitions upon the one, and of drawbacks or bounties upon the other. The effect of restraints upon importation is to cause the inhabitants of any country to make at a greater expense what they can buy at a less, and to pay somewhat dearer to their own manufacturers than they would to foreign manufacturers, and this operation being performed in favour of several different manufactures, and paid for, more or less, by every individual in the kingdom, occasions a very considerable aggregate loss to the society.