Such operations as these, are just what is requisite for facilitating the competition of rival nations; and the only means possible to engage those who did not formerly work, to begin and supply themselves. Did matters stand so, the evil would be supportable; strangers would only supply the superfluities of demand, and the balance would still be found in a kind of equilibrium at home. But, alas! even this happy state can only be of short duration. The beginnings of trade with the strangers will prove just as favourable to the vibration of their balance, by augmentations, as it was formerly to the home-traders; and now every augmentation to those, must imply a diminution to the others. What will then become of those hands, in the trading nation, who subsist only by supplying the foreign market? Will not this revolution work the same effect, as to them, as if an additional number of hands had been employed to supply the same consumption? And will not this utterly destroy the balance among the traders, by throwing an unsurmountable competition on the side of the supply? It will however have a different effect from what might have happened, if the same number of hands had been thrown into the trading nation; for, in this case, they might only destroy the consolidated profits upon labour, and perhaps restore the balance: the inconveniency would be equally felt by every workman, but profit would result to the public. But in the other case, the old traders will find no foreign sale for their work; these branches of industry will fall below the price of subsistence, and the new beginners will have _reasonable_ profits in supplying their own wants. I say _reasonable_, because this transition of trade from one nation to another, never can be sudden or easy; and can only take place in proportion to the rise in the intrinsic value of goods in that which is upon the decline, not in proportion to the rise in their profits upon the sale of them: for as long as the most extravagant profits do not become consolidated, as we have said, with the value of the work, a diminution of competition among the consumers, which may be occasioned by a beginning of foreign industry, will quickly make them disappear; and this will prove a fatal blow to the first undertakings of the rival nations. But when once they are fairly so consolidated, that prices can no more come down of themselves, and that the statesman will not lend his helping hand, then the new beginners pluck up courage, and set out by making small profits: because in all new undertakings there is mismanagement and considerable loss; and nothing discourages mankind from new undertakings more than difficult beginnings.