The steps of the process, money being used, would be these:--We prohibit
the importation of linen. The exportation of cloth continues, but is
paid for in money. Our prices rise, those in Germany fall, until silk,
or some other article, can be imported from Germany cheaper than it can
be produced at home, and in sufficient abundance to balance the export
of cloth. Thus by sacrificing the cheapness of one commodity, we gain
the cheapness of another: but we sacrifice a greater cheapness to gain a
less, and we sacrifice cheapness in the article which we most want, and
would import by preference, while our compensation is cheapness in an
article which we either could produce more advantageously at home, or
which we have so little desire for, that it requires a species of bounty
on the article to create a demand.

Restrictions on importation do, however, tend to keep down the value and
price of our remaining imports, and to keep up the nominal or money
prices of all our other commodities, by retaining a greater quantity of
money in the country than would otherwise be there. From this it
obviously follows, that if the restrictions were removed, we should have
to pay rather more for some of the articles which we now import, while
those which we are now prevented from importing would cost us more than
might be inferred from their _present_ price in the foreign market. And
general prices would fall; to the benefit of those who have fixed sums
to receive; to the disadvantage of those who have fixed sums to pay; and
giving rise, as a general fall of prices always does, to an appearance,
though a temporary and fallacious one, of general distress. [5]

It is right to observe that the measures of the British Legislature
which have been falsely characterised as measures of free trade, must,
from their extremely insignificant extent, have produced far too little
effect in increasing our importation, to have actually led, in any