My intention, at present, is to take a view of the whole region of trade, divided into its different districts, in order to point out a ruling principle in each, from which every other must naturally flow, or may be deduced by an easy reasoning. These I shall lay before my reader, that from them he may distribute his ideas in the same order I have done. Hence the terms I shall be obliged to use will be rendred more adequate, in expressing the combinations I may have occasion to convey by them. I divide trade into infant, foreign, and inland. _1mo._ Infant trade, taken in a general acceptation, may be understood to be that species, which has for its object the supplying the necessities of the inhabitants of a country; because it is commonly antecedent to the supplying the wants of strangers. This species has been known in all ages, and in all countries, in a less, or greater degree, in proportion to the multiplication of the wants of mankind, and in proportion to the numbers of those who depend on their ingenuity for procuring subsistence. The general principles which direct a statesman in the proper encouragement of this commerce, relate to two objects. 1. To promote the ease and happiness of the higher classes in making their wealth subservient to their wants and inclinations. 2. To promote the ease and happiness of the lower classes, by turning their natural faculties to an infallible means of relieving their necessities. This communicates the idea of a free society; because it implies the circulation of a real equivalent for every service; to acquire which, mankind submit with pleasure to the hardest labour. In the first book, I had little occasion to consider trade under different denominations; or as influenced by any other principle than that of promoting the multiplication of mankind, and the extension of agriculture, _by drawing the wealth of the rich into the hands of the_ industrious. This operation, when carried no farther, is a true representation of infant trade. But now I must set the matter in a new light: and consider this infant trade as a basis for establishing a foreign commerce. In itself it is only a means of gratifying the desires of those who have the equivalent; and of providing it for those who have it not. We are next to examine how, by the care of a statesman, it may prove a method whereby one society may be put in a situation to acquire a superiority over others; by diminishing, on one hand, the quantity they have of that general equivalent, and by increasing, on the other, the absolute quantity of it at home; in such a manner as not only to promote the circulation of that part of it which is necessary to supply the wants of all the citizens; but by a surplus of it, to render other nations dependent upon them, in most operations of their political oeconomy.