Great Britain were reduced by free importation nearly to a level
with those of America and the continent, and if our manufacturing
prosperity were to continue increasing, it would incontestably
answer to us to support a part of our present population on foreign
corn, and nearly the whole probably of the increasing population,
which we may naturally expect to take place in the course of the
next twenty or twenty five years.

The next question for consideration is, whether an independent
supply, if it do not come naturally, is an object really desirable
and one which justifies the interference of the legislature.

The general principles of political economy teach us to buy all our
commodities where we can have them the cheapest; and perhaps there
is no general rule in the whole compass of the science to which
fewer justifiable exceptions can be found in practice. In the simple
view of present wealth, population, and power, three of the most
natural and just objects of national ambition, I can hardly imagine
an exception; as it is only by a strict adherence to this rule that
the capital of a country can ever be made to yield its greatest
amount of produce.

It is justly stated by Dr Smith that by means of trade and
manufactures a country may enjoy a much greater quantity of
subsistence, and consequently may have a much greater population,
than what its own lands could afford. If Holland, Venice, and
Hamburg had declined a dependence upon foreign countries for their
support, they would always have remained perfectly inconsiderable
states, and never could have risen to that pitch of wealth, power,
and population, which distinguished the meridian of their career.