he must depend, for the vent of the surplus which may be produced by his labor; and that such surplus, in the ordinary course of things, will be greater or less in the same proportion.
For the purpose of this vent a domestic market is greatly to be preferred to a foreign one, because it is, in the nature of things, far more to be relied upon.
It is a primary object of the policy of nations to be able to supply themselves with subsistence from their own soils; and manufacturing nations, as far as circumstances permit, endeavor to procure from the same source the raw materials necessary for their own fabrics.
This disposition, urged by the spirit of monopoly, is sometimes even carried to an injudicious extreme. It "seems not always to be recollected that nations who have neither mines nor manufactures can only obtain the manufactured articles of which they stand in need by an exchange of the products of their soils, and that if those who can best furnish them with such articles are unwilling to give due course to this exchange they must of necessity make every possible effort to manufacture for themselves, the effect of which is that the manufacturing nations abridge the natural advantages of their situation through an unwillingness to permit the agricultural countries to enjoy the advantages of theirs and sacrifice the interests of a mutually beneficial intercourse to the vain project of selling everything and buying nothing.
But it is also a consequence of the policy which has been noted that the foreign demands for the products of agricultural countries is, in a great degree, rather casual and occasional than certain and constant. To what extent injurious interruptions of the demand for some of the staple commodities of the United States may have been experienced from that cause must be referred to the judgment of those who are engaged in carrying on the commerce of the country; but it may be safely affirmed that such interruptions are at times very inconveniently felt, and that cases not infrequently occur in which markets are so. confined and restricted as to render the demand very unequal to the supply.
Independently, likewise, of the artificial impediments which are created by the policy in question there are natural causes tending to render the external demand for the surplus of agricultural nations a precarious reliance. The differences of seasons in the countries which are the consumers make immense differences in the produce of their own soils in different years, and consequently in the degrees of their necessity for foreign supply. Plentiful harvests with them, especially if similar ones occur at the same time in the countries which are the furnishers, occasion, of course, a glut in the markets of the latter.
Considering how fast and how much the progress of new settlements in the United States must increase the surplus produce of the soil, and weighing seriously the tendency of the system which prevails among most of the commercial nations of Europe, whatever dependence may be placed upon the force of natural circumstances to counteract the effects of an artificial policy, there appear strong reasons to regard the foreign demand for that surplus as too uncertain a reliance and to desire a substitute for it in an extensive domestic market.
