on, and their equally protected allies, the raisers and manufacturers of the merchandise the export of which it encouraged. The interest of the purchasers and consumers of the commodities brought home by the trade, that is, of the great body of the community, this theory entirely overlooked, or at any rate treated as a matter of very secondary importance. If the restrictions under which the trade was carried on could be shown to be advantageous for those actually engaged in it, that was enough—it was assumed that they must be beneficial for the public generally. There was, at any rate, nothing in all this repugnant to, or irreconcileable with, the above-mentioned principle of the mercantile system;—on the contrary, the doctrine that nothing was a gain in commerce except a balance in money, or an excess of exports over imports, agreed very well with the further notion that such balance and excess were to be best secured, not by leaving commerce free to flow in its natural channels, but by forcing it in particular directions through all sorts of embankments and artificial conduits.
The most noted among the theoretical writers on the subject of trade in this age, in England, were Mr. Thomas Mun, Sir Josiah Child, and Sir William Petty. The immediate object of most of the publications both of Mun and Child was the defence of the East India Company both against the assailants of its exclusive privileges and against other parties who denounced the Indian trade altogether as bringing a heavy annual loss upon the nation. It is curious to remark the gradual dawning upon men's minds of just views as to this matter with the advance of discussion and experience. Before the controversy about the trade with India, the almost universally received belief had been that the exportation of gold and silver ought as far as possible to be prevented altogether. This was what our old laws had constantly attempted to do; and in fact it was not till the year 1663 that, by a clause in an act for the encouragement of trade (15 Car. II. c. 7, s. 9), it was made lawful to export foreign coin or bullion,—"forasmuch as several considerable and advantageous trades cannot be conveniently driven and
