AD AM SMITH ON FREE-TRADE. [To THE EDITOR Or THE
"SPECTATtlIt.".1 SIR,—As the Times pretends that Adam Smith was an advocate of retaliation by imposing taxes on imports, I beg to send you an extract from the " Wealth of Nations," Book IV., chap. 2, showing his conclusions on the subject: " How far it may be proper to impose taxes upon importation of foreign goods, iu order, not to prevent their importation, but to raise a revenue for the Government, I shall consider hereafter when I come to treat of taxes. Taxes imposed with a view to prevent, or even to diminish, importation, are evidently as destructive of the revenue of the customs as of the freedom of trade."
In another part of the same chapter Adam Smith says :— "To judge whether such retaliations are likely to produce such an effect, does not, perhaps, belong so much to the science of a legislator, whose deliberations cught to be governed by general principles which are always the same, as to the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctua- tions of affairs Every such law, therefore, imposes a real tax upon the whole country, not in favour of that particular class of workmen who were injured by our neighbour's pro- hibition, but of some other class." . .
From the above extracts it is quite evident Adam Smith con- sidered all such tariffs as are now proposed to be levied as preferential in the interests of the Empire generally as really destructive of the best interests of the community, and Sir R. Peel and all real legislators arrived at the same con- clusions after long thought and deliberation.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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