He must cut off all foreign competition, beyond a certain standard, for that quantity of subsistence which is necessary for home consumption; and, by premiums upon exportation, he must discharge the farmers of any superfluous load, which may remain upon their hands when prices fall too low. This important matter shall be explained at large in another place, when we come to treat of the policy of grain. If natural causes should produce a rise in the price of subsistence, which cannot be brought down by extending agriculture, he must then lay the whole community under contribution, in order to indemnify those who work for strangers, for the advance upon the price of their food; or he must indemnify the strangers in another way, for the advance in the price of manufactures. He must consider the manufactures of superfluity, as worked up for the use of strangers, and discourage all domestic competition for them, by every possible means. He must do what he can, constantly to proportion the supply to the demand made for them; and when the first necessarily comes to exceed the latter, in spight of all his care, he must then consider what remains over the demand, as a superfluity of the strangers; and for the support of the equal balance between work and demand, he must promote the sale of them even within the country, under certain restrictions, until the hands employed in such branches where a redundancy is found, can be more usefully set to work in another way. He must consider the advancement of the common good as a direct object of private interest to every individual, and by a disinterested administration of the public money, he must plainly make it appear that it is so. From this principle flows the authority, vested in all governments, to load the community with taxes, in order to advance the prosperity of the state. And this object can be nowise better obtained than by applying the amount of them to the keeping an even balance between work and demand. Upon this the health of a trading state principally depends. If the failure of foreign demand be found to proceed from the superior natural advantages of other countries, he must double his diligence to promote luxury among his neighbours; he must support simplicity at home; he must increase his bounties upon exportation; and his expence in relieving manufactures, when the price of their industry falls below the expence of their subsistence. While these operations are conducted with coolness and perseverance, while the allurements of the wealth acquired do not frustrate the execution, the statesman may depend upon seeing foreigners return to his ports, so soon as their own dissipation, and want of frugality, come to compensate the advantages which nature had given them over their frugal and industrious neighbours.