What is it that would be the loss, suppose it to amount to any thing, that a nation would sustain by the giving up of any colony? The difference between the profit to be made by the employing in that trade so much capital as would be employed in it were the colony kept, and the profit that would be made by the employment of the same capital in any other way, suppose in the improvement of land. The loss is nothing, if the same capital employed in the improvement of land would be more productive: and it would be more productive by the amount of so much as would go to form the annual rent: for deducting that rent, capital employed in the improvement of land produces as much as if employed in any other way. If the loss were any thing, would it then amount to the whole difference between the profit upon that trade, and the profit upon the next most profitable one? no: but only to the difference between so much of that difference as would be produced if the colony were retained in subjection, and so much as would be produced if the colony were declared free.
The value of a colony to the mother country, according to the common mode of computation, is equal to the sum total of imports from that colony and exports to it put together.
From this statement, if the foregoing observation be just, the following deductions will come to be made.
1. The whole value of the exports to the colony.
2. So much of the imports as is balanced by the exports.
3. Such a portion of the above remainder as answers to so much of the trade as would be equally carried on, were the colony independent.
4. So much of that reduced profit as would be made, were the same capital employed in any other trade or branch of industry lost by the independence of the colony.
5. But the same capital, if employed in agriculture. would have produced a rent over and above the ordinary profits of capital: which rent, according to a general and undisputed computation, may be stated at a sum equal to the amount of those profits. Thence arises a further deduction, viz. the loss to the nation caused by employing the capital in the trade to the colony, in preference to the improvement of land, and thence upon the supposition that the continuance of the trade depended upon the keeping the colony in subjection.
The other mischiefs resulting from the keeping of a colony in subjection, are:
1. The expence of its establishment, civil and military.
2. The contingent expence of wars and other coercive measures for keeping it in subjection.
3. The contingent expence of wars for the defence of it against foreign powers.
4. The force, military and naval, constantly kept on foot under the apprehension of such wars.
5. The occasional danger to political liberty from the force thus kept up.
6. The contingent expence of wars produced by alliances contracted for the purpose of supporting wars that may be brought on by the defence of it.
7. The corruptive effects of the influence resulting from the patronage of the establishment, civil and military.
8. The damage that must be done to the national stock of intelligence by the false views of the national interest, which must be kept up in order to prevent the nation from opening their eyes and insisting upon the enfranchisement of the colony.
9. The sacrifice that must be made of the real interest of the colony to this imaginary interest of the mother-country. It is for the purpose of governing it badly, and for no other, that you wish to get or keep a colony. Govern it well, it is of no use to you.
To govern its inhabitants as well as they would govern themselves, you must choose to govern them those only whom they would themselves choose, you must sacrifice none of their interests to your own, you must bestow as much time and attention to their interests as they would themselves, in a word, you must take those very measures and no others, which they themselves would take. But would this be governing? And what would it be worth to you, if it were?
After all, it would be impossible for you to govern them so well as they would themselves, on account of the distance.
10. The bad government resulting to the mother-country from the complication, the indistinct views of things, and the consumption of time occasioned by this lof distant dependencies.
This book is provided by FunNovel Novel Book | Fan Fiction Novel [Beautiful Free Novel Book]