If this plan be pursued, foreign trade will increase in proportion to the number of inhabitants; and domestic luxury will serve only as an instrument in the hands of the statesman to increase demand when the home supply becomes too great for foreign consumption. In other words, the rich citizens will be engaged to consume what is superfluous, in order to keep the balance even in favour of the industrious, and in favour of the nation. The whole purport of this plan is to point out the operation of three very easy principles. The first, That in a country entirely taken up with the object of promoting foreign trade, no competition should be allowed to come from abroad for articles of the first necessity, and principally for food, so as to raise prices beyond a certain standard. The second, That no domestic competition should be allowed upon articles of superfluity, so as to raise prices beyond a certain standard. The third, That when these standards cannot be preserved, and that from natural causes, prices get above them, public money must be thrown into the scale to bring prices to the level of those of exportation. The greater the extent of foreign trade in any nation, the lower these standards _must_ be kept; the less the extent of it, the higher they _may_ be allowed to rise. Consequently, Were no man in a nation employed in producing the necessaries of life, but every man in supplying articles of foreign consumption, the prices of necessaries might be allowed to fall as low as possible. There would be no occasion for a standard in favour of those who live by producing them. Were no man in the state employed in supplying strangers, the prices of superfluities might be allowed to rise as high as possible, and a standard would also become useless, as the sole design of it is to favour exportation. But as neither of these suppositions can ever take place, and as in every nation there is a part employed in producing, and a part in consuming, and that it is only the surplus of industry which can be exported; a standard is necessary for the support of the reciprocal interests of both parties at home; and the public money must be made to operate only upon the price of _the surplus_ of industry so as to make it exportable, even in cases where the national prices upon home consumption have got up beyond the standard. Let me set this matter in another light, the better to communicate an idea which I think a little obscure. Were food and other necessaries the pure gift of nature in any country, I should have laid it down as a principle to discourage all foreign competition for them, either below or above any certain standard; because in this case the lower the price the better, since no inconveniency could result from thence to any industrious person. But when the production of these is in itself a manufacture, or an object of industry, a certain standard must be kept up in favour of those who live by producing them.