ADVERTISEMENT. THE Statute by which the Professorship of Political Economy is founded, requires the Professor to publish a Lecture every In compliance with this requisition year. I have selected from the course delivered in June, 1827, the portion which appeared to me least unfit for separate publication. As a fragment it is necessarily imperfect. My apology for presenting it to the Public is the necessity imposed on me by the Statute. MAGDALEN COLLEGE, March 20, 1828. N. W. SENIOR. LECTURE I. TRANSMISSION OF THE PRECIOUS METALS FROM COUNTRY TO COUNTRY. I PROPOSE, in the present Lecture, to consider the effect of the actual transmission of the precious metals from one country to another. An inquiry peculiarly interesting at present, as it leads to conclusions decisive of the controversy now eagerly maintained on Free Trade. The argument runs generally in the following form. The advocate of freedom dwells on the benefit of making full use of our own peculiar advantages of situation, wealth, and skill, and availing ourselves to the utmost of those possessed by our neighbours. He asks whether B we should act wisely, if we were to declare ourselves independent of foreigners for wine, to devote our mineral treasures, and our industry, to the forcing of grapes for the production of home-made port and claret, and discontinue the manufacture of cottons and woollens for the markets of Oporto and Bourdeaux? And he urges that the same absurdity in kind belongs to every protecting duty and prohibition. He observes, in the words of Adam Smith,* that it is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to make at home, what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not make his own shoes, but buys them of the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not make his own clothes, but buys them of the tailor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. All of them find it their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over * Book iv. chap. 2. |