existing.

With a view to practical legislation, therefore, duties on importation
may be divided into two classes: those which have the effect of
encouraging some particular branch of domestic industry, and those which
have not.

The former are purely mischievous, both to the country imposing them,
and to those with whom it trades. They prevent a saving of labour and
capital, which, if permitted to be made, would be divided in some
proportion or other between the importing country and the countries
which buy what that country does or might export.

The other class of duties are those which do not encourage one mode of
procuring an article at the expense of another, but allow interchange to
take place just as if the duty did not exist--and to produce the saving
of labour which constitutes the motive to international as to all other
commerce. Of this kind, are duties on the importation of any commodity
which could not by any possibility be produced at home; and duties not
sufficiently high to counterbalance the difference of expense between
the production of the article at home, and its importation. Of the money
which is brought into the treasury of any country by taxes of this last
description, a part only is paid by the people of that country; the
remainder by the foreign consumers of their goods.

Nevertheless, this latter kind of taxes are in principle as ineligible
as the former, although not precisely on the same ground. A protecting
duty can never be a cause of gain, but always and necessarily of loss,
to the country imposing it, just so far as it is efficacious to its end.
A non-protecting duty on the contrary would, in most cases, be a source