A statesman therefore, should be very attentive to put the inland trade in grain upon the best footing possible, to prevent the frauds of merchants, and to promote an equal distribution of food in all corners of the country: and by the means of importation and exportation, according to plenty and scarcity, to regulate a just proportion between the general plenty of the year in Europe, and the price of subsistence; always observing to keep it somewhat lower at home, than it can be found in any rival nation in trade. If this method be well observed, inhabitants will multiply; and this is a principal step towards reducing the expence of manufactures; because you increase the number of hands, and consequently diminish the price of labour. Another expedient found to operate most admirable effects in reducing the price of manufactures (in those countries where living is rendred dear, by a hurtful competition among the inhabitants for the subsistence produced) is the invention and introduction of machines. We have, in a former chapter, answered the principal objections which have been made against them, in countries where the numbers of the idle, or trifling industrious, are so great, that every expedient which can abridge labour, is looked upon as a scheme for starving the poor. There is no solidity in this objection; and if there were, we are not at present in quest of plans for feeding the poor; but for accumulating the wealth of a trading nation, by enabling the industrious to feed themselves at the expence of foreigners. The introduction of machines is found to reduce prices in a surprizing manner. And if they have the effect of taking bread from hundreds, formerly employed in performing their simple operations, they have that also of giving bread to thousands, by extending numberless branches of ingenuity, which, without the machines, would have remained circumscribed within very narrow limits. What progress has not building made within these hundred years? Who doubts that the conveniency of great iron works, and saw mills, prompts many to build? And this taste has greatly contributed to increase, not diminish, the number both of smiths and carpenters, as well as to extend navigation. I shall only add in favour of such expedients, that experience shews the advantage gained by certain machines, is more than enough to compensate every inconvenience arising from consolidated profits, and expensive living; and that the first inventors gain thereby a superiority which nothing but adopting the same invention can counterbalance. The third cause of high prices we have said to be owing to the natural advantages which neighbouring nations reap from their climate, soil, or situation. Here no rise of prices is implied in the country in question, they are only supposed to have become relatively high by the opportunity other nations have had to furnish the same articles at a lower rate, in consequence of their natural advantages.