Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy
John Stuart Mill · en
Now this fall of price, supposing it to happen, will probably affect the
demand on both sides; and it will either affect it alike in both
countries, or it will affect it unequally. It will affect it alike, if
the fall of price does not affect the demand at all, or if it affects it
equally in both countries. If either of these results should take place,
the cloth and the linen would continue to balance each other as before:
no money would pass from one country to the other; prices in both would
continue at the point to which they had fallen, and each country would
exactly save the cost of carriage on the commodity which it imports from
the other.
But the result might be, that the fall of price might not have an effect
exactly equal, on the demand in the two countries. Suppose, for
instance, that the fall of cloth in Germany owing to the saving of the
cost of carriage, did not increase the demand for cloth in Germany; but
that the fall of linen in England from a like cause, did increase the
demand for linen in England. The linen imported would be more than could
be paid for by the cloth exported: the difference must be paid in money:
the change in the distribution of the precious metals between the two
countries would lower the price of cloth in England, (and consequently
in Germany), while it would raise the price of linen in Germany, (and
consequently in England). Germany, therefore, by the annihilation of
cost of carriage, would save in price more than the cost of carriage of
the cloth; England would save less in price than the cost of carriage of
the linen. But if by the miraculous annihilation of cost of carriage,
England would not _save_ the whole of the carriage of her imports, it
follows that England did not previously _pay_ the whole of that cost of
carriage.