Anders Chydenius

“ If ten men produce goods to the value of 100 Daler a day in one trade, but in another to a value of not more than 80, it is obvious that in the latter eventuality the Nation will lose 20 Daler a day on those ten men's work. Whether these ten workmen be at liberty to sell their produce or be free to negotiate for daily wages with those who conduct the trade in question, the difference in their wages will always be in the said proportion, and then it is certain that they will enter the former as being more profitable to the Nation and to themselves. ”

“ Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature. ”

“ The answer that more people can live when trades are increased is of no avail here, for it is by no means their number that increases the gain of the Nation, but only the value of their products, if it were only in one trade. As long as the soil is not cultivated, the Factories lack workmen and our workshops are empty, anxiety to carry on even more trades is superfluous in my opinion. ”

“ All domestic Operations and the most subtle Financial tricks which do not also open up foreign trade are in my opinion as useless as such a fine artifice as a perpetuum mobile or a water-mill that is to run by itself in a well. ”

“ From this it leaps to the eye that a Nation does not gain through being occupied with many different trades, but through working in those that pay best, that is, in which the least number of people can produce commodities to the highest value.
§ 4 Thus the wealth of a Nation consists in the multitude of products or, rather, in their value; but the multitude of products depends on two chief causes, namely, the number of workmen and their diligence. Nature will produce both, when she is left untrammelled. ”

“ Every man seeks his own gain. This inclination is so natural and necessary that all Communities in the world are founded upon it. Otherwise Laws, punishments and rewards would not exist and mankind would soon perish altogether. The work that has the greatest value is always best paid, and what is best paid is most sought after.
As long as I can produce 6 Daler worth of goods a day in one trade, I do not willingly change to another that brings in 4. In the former case the Nation's gain and mine was one-third more than in the latter. ”

“ Men there are no hindrances, every workman strives for his daily bread and thereby increases the gain of the Nation. But by Statutes the people are collected into certain groups, the possibilities of trade become limited, and in each group a small number keeps at the top above the great body of the people whose opulence is used as a reason for assuming the prosperity of the whole Nation. ”

“ If that cannot be done, I think it wiser to turn the beast of burden out to grass to seek its food itself rather than to tether it to a post and leave it there for some weeks without taking care of it; for it is too late to learn a handicraft when there is no food left.
To prevent trade in the countryside is to check the growth of the population and of all cultivation, and to prohibit handicrafts and trade is to reduce the business of old towns and the foundation of new ones. ”

“ What a time, when the offspring have begun to order their mother about, and the child wants to make a show of the grey hairs of its father's head!
§ 26 A merchant who is entitled to trade freely enlarges his cares; he will be busy every moment turning over his goods with profit. If anyone tries to gain too much, he will get competitors, who will divide the gain and save citizens from barefaced robbery. Everyone must then be content with less profit on each commodity, but must instead turn it over much more frequently. ”

“ Thus it is obvious that, when somebody conducts an enterprise by the work of others, but neither pays nor is able to pay without loss as much as the workers can earn in some other trade, the deficiency in their wages must then be a National loss. ”

“ Thus, all privileges in trade belong here, not only the Exclusive ones, but also all those which give a producer some special advantage; all classifications of trade made by Law; for Nature itself makes a classification, which is the safest; but as soon as the Laws add to or deduct something from it, disturbances will immediately be noticed, which favour some special persons, but prevent others from carrying on their trade. ”

“ But if one-third of the same Nation, after the example of others, were to abandon this trade of theirs and become farmers with the intention of thereby producing bread for themselves and their fellow-citizens, thinking that they would gain more in this way, but that the corn produced was 1 Million less in value than the former production of the same one-third, it is obvious that by this they would have caused the Nation 1 Million reduction in gain or, which is the same thing, an equally great loss. ”

“ It was punishment for fallen man to support himself in the sweat of his brow; but this punishment was such that Nature itself measured it out, when man was forced to work because of his wants, when he had nothing but his own hands to rely on for his needs ”

“ Limited production makes idle hands and expensive goods, and if it should one day happen that other towns are allowed to stop these sales or prevent workmen from free occupation, then it is as certain as that two and two make four that Stockholm would have to buy more expensive wooden vessels than before, these towns would have their trade reduced, the country would lose inhabitants and earnings and the State its gain. ”

“ Industry and diligence require a gay heart and constant competition, if they are not to slacken. They are never to be found under the yoke; but when they are encouraged by liberty, quick returns and individual gain, the natural torpor, which can never in the long run be driven away by blows, will be overcome.
§ 21 Commodities are never produced without being wanted and demanded. Wants show themselves; they are manifold, and thus they spontaneously call into existence trade and products, which latter will later be sold to those, who need them. ”

“ Let us first agree as to the words.
§ 2 A Nation is a multitude of people who have joined in order to secure their own prosperity and that of their descendants under the protection of the Government and through its Public Servants.
Man thrives when he enjoys his needs and comforts, which, according to our ordinary way of speaking, are called goods. Nature produces them, but they can never be of use to us without labour. ”

“ We think that the people who are drawn to this trade did not earn anything before or had not been able to do so, though a man who, without begging or stealing, had unfailingly supported himself and his family in his former trade earned more than in his new one, in which his income is scarcely enough for himself alone, and his wife and children must trudge the streets and live on the earnings of others.
It is quite useful for a Nation to discover new trades; among them there might be one that was more profitable than any of the old ones and might thus increase the National gain. ”

“ Owing to a strange difference between Inland Towns and Staple Towns, the foreigner is prevented from looking for goods and paying for them in Cash in a great many harbours. Goods must be offered to the inhabitants of the Staple Town: if he does not want to pay for them, there is no way of getting them sold. Diligence will then lose a good deal of its incentive, the products will be reduced and money will begin to leave the Country. A fine gain for the Nation! ”

“ It is immovable and not affrighted, though the waves splash their gall over it. It can stand burial by selfishness in the bottom gravel with which enraged waves cover it, yet in spite of all this it remains firm as a rock and irrevocable. ”

“ We complain of an unfavourable balance of trade, and we impede one another as much as possible in selling our goods abroad. We want to enlarge trade, and we work for its limitation to fifteen or twenty persons. We grow emaciated through a high premium on foreign Bills, yet we try with all our might to restrict Remittances to as few Drawers as possible, who besides this already have quite an autocratic power over the Rate of Exchange.
We want to increase the National gain, and at the same time we occupy our people with work in which they can scarcely earn bread and water for the day. ”

“ I have heard several proposals of this kind: that when a peasant will not work diligently on his farm he should be whipped at the whipping-post or at least be driven from his freehold. Indeed, it has already actually happened that some have been punished, because they have not been able at once to give up a very old source of livelihood without which they would, in the first place, have had to be at least half-starved.
Such people unfailingly understand our liberty. ”

“ Nobody undertakes to be an agent of the poor, and nobody is capable of keeping accounts with fifty or sixty persons. Thus, if this Peddling had not been done, the Nation would have lacked those commodities, and the poor would have perished in hunger and idleness. If the commodity is not desired, its production will cease, and where does the National gain come in then? ”

“ All through the winter the worker is hard at work making all kinds of wooden vessels as early as one or two o'clock in the morning, and thus he can sell his goods cheaper than anybody in all Finland, though many others along the coast have not only a better supply of forests, but also of workmen well versed in this trade. Let us look for the cause of this. It is quite impossible that such diligence could arise and be maintained without freedom of Export.
The towns mentioned above have of old had the liberty of sailing round the Baltic with poles, laths and wooden vessels. ”

“ Would the Great Master, who adorns the valley with flowers and covers the cliff itself with grass and mosses, exhibit such a great mistake in man, his masterpiece, that man should not be able to enrich the globe with as many inhabitants as it can support? ”

“ Accordingly it must happen that the foreigner can carry on the most profitable trade with our products in our own country. I stick to the little example I have mentioned: the Swedish Manufactured goods that were sold to the foreigner for 6 Riksdaler he can immediately on the spot sell for 71⁄2 Riksdaler, at a profit of 25 per cent., to a Swede, who thus makes a purchase for half a Riksdaler less, or gains 8 1/3 per cent., than if he bought them from a Swedish Factory-shop, and therefore there will never be any lack of buyers. ”

“ The more opportunities there are in a Society for some persons to live upon the toil of others, and the less those others may enjoy the fruits of their work themselves, the more is diligence killed, the former become insolent, the latter despairing, and both negligent. ”

“ When we exchange these commodities, it is called commerce, and the commodities that are commonly desired and accepted are gold and silver, larger or smaller coined parts of which are called money, which has become the measure of the value of other commodities. ”

“ As soon as foreigners have immigrated, a sound Policy demands that the best should be got out of their work, and this is infallibly to be secured in the trade that pays its workmen the best wages, but never in those in which they must be a burden to the State and the Public. The first they will find for themselves; the second they will not remain in except by compulsion, and there poverty will at last be the reward of their removal.
§ 31 This conception of the National gain, however hard it may seem to be on our new enterprises, is nevertheless the simplest and easiest in itself. ”

“ I could reveal a little Commercial plan that would give Sweden several thousands from some foreign Bounties on Exportation, did I not fear to wake others from their lethargy, when they might close some secret veins which, without being noticed in the Balance of Trade, now really counterbalance our deficit. ”

“ The manufacturer is really as well dressed in his own produce as anybody, but the workmen in the spinning-mill often sit half naked, and others walk the streets in rags, and beg, saying that they are foreigners who have been induced to come to the Country, but who now wish they were home again rather than in Sweden, where they have to stand at other people's doors and will finally have to die in poverty. ”

“ Here is the cord that binds the workman's hands behind his back, and the beverage that makes citizens bad and lethargic.
No Nation can be diligent as long as this stamp remains on its products, and the stamp can never be obliterated until the commodity can be produced by anyone who wants to make it and sold to him who needs it. ”

“ If every man had the right and the opportunity to trade with the foreigner himself, there would not be so many who were obliged to sacrifice at the altars of the Exporters in order to be allowed to buy Bills ”

“ A Dutch Merchant will be sitting in his office every morning at five or six o'clock seeing to all his Business; he dresses plainly and his table does not bend beneath sumptuous dishes; he is anxious to accomplish something every hour and makes a laughing-stock of Frenchified bucks and aristocratic airs. ”

“ Now such an arrangement is made so that our own shipowners may profit by the freights on our own goods and Swedish men by wages; now, again, to get gold and silver into the country. Sometimes the Statutes aim at preventing the people emigrating; sometimes they aim at checking luxury. Sometimes they are found necessary to maintain order in trade and industry, and sometimes they must exist to prevent people driving different trades at the same time, and innumerable other things. ”

“ Many a man who observes our Nation only, might easily imagine that there was no lack of diligence among them, but I must confess that it has hurt me to hear foreigners reproach us for being a lazy Nation compared to others. ”

“ The weight of the water in a dam rests on the Water nearest to the bottom, so that the building must be much stronger and much more solid there; for we know from experience that the water at the bottom pours out through the smallest opening with greater rapidity than it does at the surface.
It is just the same thing with our population. We may turn to any trade and the number of people working in it. ”