_1mo._ If a nation then has formed a scheme of being long great and powerful by trade, she must first apply closely to the manufacturing every natural produce of the country. For this purpose a sufficient number of hands must be employed: for if hands be found wanting, the natural produce will be exported without receiving any additional value from labour; and so the consequences of this natural advantage will be lost. The price of food, and all necessaries for manufacturers, must be found at an easy rate. And, in the last place, if oeconomy and sobriety in the workmen, and good regulations on the part of the statesman, are not kept up, the end will not be obtained: for if the manufacture, when brought to its perfection, does not retain the advantages which the manufacturer had in the beginning, by employing the natural produce of the country; it is the same thing as if the advantage had not existed. I shall illustrate this by an example. I shall suppose wool to be better, more plentiful, and cheaper, in one country than in another, and two nations rivals in that trade. It is natural that the last should desire to buy wool of the first, and that the other should desire to keep it at home, in order to manufacture it. Here then is a natural advantage which the first country has over the latter, and which cannot be taken from her. I shall suppose that subsistence is as cheap in one country as in the other; that is to say, that bread and every other necessary of life is at the same price. If the workmen of the first country (by having been the founders of the cloth manufacture, and by having had, for a long tract of years, so great a superiority over other nations, as to make them, in a manner, absolutely dependent upon them for cloths) shall have raised their prices from time to time; and if, in consequence of large profits, long enjoyed without rivalship, these have been so consolidated with the real value, by an habitual greater expence in living, which implies an augmentation of wages; that country may thereby lose all the advantages it had from the low price and superior quality of its wool. But if, on the other hand, the workmen in the last country work less, be less dextrous, pay extravagant prices for wool at prime cost, and be at great expence in carriage; if manufactures cannot be carried on successfully, but by public authority, and if private workmen be crushed with excessive taxes upon their industry; all the accidental advantages which the last country had over the first, may come to be more than balanced, and the first may regain those which nature first had given her. But this should by no means make the first country rest secure. These accidental inconveniencies found in the last may come to cease; and therefore the only real security of the first for that branch, is the cheapness of the workmanship.