assistance--assistance given to that industry at the expense of the
community at large; the preservation of an existing industry may demand
like assistance. When the labour and capital employed can be transferred
productively to another industry, it is obviously better that the transfer
should take place, and the failing industry lapse, than that the community
should be charged with maintaining an industry which cannot support itself
--whether or no the competitors driving it out of the market are enabled to
do so only by like extraneous assistance. When the capital and the labour
cannot be transferred, but the industry can be maintained by assistance,
the question becomes one of weighing the cost of maintenance to the
community against the injury to the community from the collapse of the
industry. Thus in any state with its commerce in the making, when the
transferability of capital and labour is at best in dispute, the theory of
buying in the cheapest market, wherever it is to be found, is not in
favour. It is held better to raise the prices to the point at which the
native product pays its native producers. In mediaeval times the foreigner
was _prima facie_ a person who came not to bring trade but to
appropriate it. Hence he was subjected to regulations, limitations and
charges for permission to carry on his operations. The next stage is
reached when reciprocal free trade is recognised as an advantage and mutual
concessions are made, restrictions and duties becoming, so to speak,
implements of war, often enough proving two-edged.

[Sidenote: Henry's commercial policy]

Henry VII. was not an economist far in advance of the theories of his age;
but economic considerations, as they were then understood, carried much
more weight, and generally played a much larger part in his policy than was
customary with the king-craft of the times, or with state-craft outside the
commercial republic of Venice, the commercial association of German Free