Externalism

“ I will not now embark on the troubled sea of foreign policy. But on one point I will touch, since it was raised by the last speaker, and that is the question of our foreign trade. In no department of human activity, I will venture to say, are the intentions of the Almighty more plainly indicated, than in this of the interchange of the products of labour. To each part of the habitable globe have been assigned its special gifts for the use and delectation of Man; to every nation its peculiar skill, its appropriate opportunities. ”

“ Here then we have, in a brief and inadequate statement, circumstances in all these great industrial nations peculiar to each, yet certainly sufficient to account for a period of reaction and distress. We have also before us great features of change in the world's industry and commerce which must ultimately produce immeasurable advantages, but which may well, operating with local causes, produce temporary difficulty; and we have to notice also that the local causes react through the commercial and credit relations of nations to distribute the evil. ”

“ With the vast extension of our enterprise and our trade, comes a breadth of liability not less large, to consider every thing that is critical in the affairs of foreign states; and the real responsibilities thus existing for us, are unnaturally inflated for us by fast-growing tendencies toward exaggeration of our concern in these matters, and even toward setting up fictitious interests in cases where none can discern them except ourselves, and such continental friends as practice upon our credulity and our fears for purposes of their own. ”

“ I suggest we start from scratch in discussing international relations, and do so on the 'societal' pattern of mankind without using the traditional split into 'international law', 'international politics', 'world trade', 'history', etc. Let us regard - thus continuing the Utilitarian approach-the whole fabric of international human relation as producing human happiness and unhappiness. ”

“ In the third place we have learnt that in the backward regions of the earth it is the duty of the ruling power, firstly, to protect its primitive subjects from unscrupulous exploitation, to guard their simple customs, proscribing only those which are immoral, and to afford them the means of a gradual emancipation from barbarism; secondly, to develop the economic resources of these regions for the needs of the industrial world, to open them up by modern communications, and to make them available on equal terms to all nations, giving no advantage to its own citizens. ”

“ Why is there not the promotion of that simple, but no less effectual arrangement in the economy of the universe, by which the various productions of one country may be reciprocated with advantage, by communications made from another? ”

“ The permitting an exchange of industries with other nations is a direct encouragement of your own, which without that, would bring you nothing for your comfort, and would of course cease to be produced. ”

“ It appears to me, that this much has now been palpably demonstrated, namely, that an advanced and complicated social condition like this in which we live can only be maintained by establishing mutual relationships between the most remote nations; and that the limitation of commerce would, like the sapping of a main pillar, inevitably occasion the fall of the whole edifice; and also that commerce is so essentially beneficial and in accordance with man’s nature, that the well-being of each nation is an advantage to all the nations that stand in connection with it. ”

“ The countries of which it gives us a new knowledge are probably destined to act with great power on our interests, some as the rivals of our commerce, some as the depôts of our manufactures, and some as the recipients of that overflow of population which Europe is now pouring out from all her fields on the open wilderness of the world. ”

“ Like many other things, our problem of foreign commerce may be reduced to very simple principles which will be universally recognized by all who do one thing: take the politics out of the matter and judge it on its own merits. ”

“ But I will observe, that all nations act upon the supposition of the reality of its existence, and seek to avoid a trade, the balance of which is unfavorable, and to foster that which presents a favorable balance. ”

“ But at the same time I must indicate the economic movement, preparing, as it undoubtedly is, yet another new grouping of the nations of the world: the world-wide competition between territorial and national products, characterising the new era, the leading moral ideas of which have yet to breast the horizon. ”

“ The relations of economic objects to the desires of nations and to war are complex and not precisely what they may on the surface appear to be. Nations, like individuals, do not know what they need, and they do not even understand clearly what they desire. Their desires are complex: elementary economic motives, political motives, personal motives, the motives of industry and finance, the motive of power and the craving for certain states of consciousness all exist together, and to some extent antagonize one another. ”

“ It is to be found in the fact that, during almost the whole existence of this government, we have shaped our industry, our navigation, and our commerce, in reference to an extraordinary war in Europe, and to foreign markets, which no longer exist; in the fact, that we have depended too much upon foreign sources of supply, and excited too little the native; in the fact that, whilst we have cultivated, with assiduous care, our foreign resources, we have suffered those at home to wither, in a state of neglect and abandonment. ”

“ In what measure the need of individual countries to obtain materials of production from other lands and to find new markets for their own products is responsible for the growth of international dependence. ”

“ The Government for internal affairs must also be the Government for external affairs. Important international issues, such as tariffs and commercial treaties, cannot be removed from Government control. ”

“ There are thus great areas, externally self-protecting, where free trade, as between internal divisions, has been introduced with little, if any, political difficulty, and with considerable economic advantage. ”

“ It has created industries whose raw materials come from abroad and whose products require, for an outlet, the universal or world market. It has thus developed the reciprocal interdependence of nations, no one of which to-day can live without the aid of the others. ”

“ To express the same thing in other words; a country which destroys or prevents altogether certain branches of foreign trade, thereby annihilating a general gain to the world, which would be shared in some proportion between itself and other countries—does, in some circumstances, draw to itself, at the expense of foreigners, a larger share than would else belong to it of the gain arising from that portion of its foreign trade which it suffers to subsist. ”

“ Without this, social and political systems, imperial dominion, wealth and power, a favourable balance of trade avail nothing; with it, forms and methods and the enginery of living will look out for themselves. ”

“ I well know that the laws of nature are fixed, and that sooner or later every nation will resort to that species of industry she has marked out for it; but the evil is done, and the deviation of this departure from true principles will be much more considerable than is generally supposed. A nation which receives its manufactured articles from abroad, cultivates with care the productions of its soil to exchange them in return; this culture would be naturally more neglected, when the exportation is lessened by the refusal to admit foreign manufactures in exchange. ”

“ While, on the one hand, the facilities possessed by each for certain kinds of production will render exchange mutually advantageous, on the other hand, the citizens of each will, under the industrial régime, tolerate no such restraints on their individualities as are implied by interdicts on exchange.
With the spread of the industrial type, therefore, the tendency is toward the breaking down of the divisions between nationalities, and the running through them of a common organization—if not under a single government, then under a federation of governments. ”

“ With all the other crazy things that have been happening lately to throw suspicion our way, our system stands in danger of being ejected from the Federation unless we can clear ourselves. You know what that would mean to our trade activities? ”

“ Carry through a policy of economic nationalism, under which all the large and well-equipped nations and empires conserve for their exclusive uses the national resources they command, and what happens? ”

“ We are told that it is the common interest of the two nations to open the markets of the world to their commerce, and, by implication, to prevent, wherever possible, the entire or partial closing of any of them. ”

“ It rests at bottom upon no reason at all; inasmuch as the very functions which it would permit to governments, are, by remote consequence, much more than purely defensive. It appears to us, that this maxim (with others of the like import) is doubly mischievous. ”

“ The relations of a group of men to the outside world ought, whenever possible, to be controlled by a neutral authority. It is here that the state is necessary for adjusting the relations between different trades. ”

“ Such wise and wide action promotes the common good of all the nations, and makes the best of all accessible to all, and arms each with the power of all; while the narrow and senseless policy of drawing into one's own shell after putting up barricades against one's neighbors, by lessening everywhere the Diversities of relative Advantage, so far forth incapacitates all for profitable and progressive Exchanges. ”

“ It subordinates, without hesitation or equivocation, every particularistic interest, be it personal, regional, or national, to the paramount interests of humanity, firmly convinced that in a world of inter-dependent peoples and nations the advantage of the part is best to be reached by the advantage of the whole, and that no abiding benefit can be conferred upon the component parts if the general interests of the entity itself are ignored or neglected. ”

“ The proximate cause, doubtless, is the increased capacity of the people of this country to consume the produce of other countries, aided and invigorated by the reciprocal facility which our consumption of foreign articles gives to other nations in the extended use of the products of our own industry. ”

“ The policy I am advocating is, therefore, not a merely idealistic one. It suits this Republic best morally as well as materially. It is best calculated to preserve our free institutions intact, and it will give us eventually by far the greatest expansion of trade at the smallest risk, while other nations are fighting for such expansion. Such conflicts on a large scale we may witness before long. ”

“ The growing dependence of modern civilized and thickly populated countries for the necessaries of life and industry, for commercial profits, and for gainful investments of capital upon free access to other countries, especially to countries differing from themselves in climate, natural resources, and degree of economic development, is of necessity a consideration of increasing weight in the foreign policy of to-day. ”

“ We are told that we produce more than this country can consume, and must have foreign markets in which to sell our surplus products. Well, must we own the countries with which we wish to trade? Is not this a notion ludicrously barbarous? ”

“ I shall now give a short sketch of the general principles upon which a system of foreign trade may be established and preserved as long as possible, and of the methods by which it may be again recovered, when, from the natural advantages and superior ability of administration in rival nations, (not from vices at home) a people have lost for a time every advantage they used to draw from their foreign commerce. ”

“ Encourage a large population, for you will need workmen for your factories and an agricultural community does not raise enough workmen. 5. Let the State watch this process and interfere whenever it is necessary to do so.
Instead of regarding International Trade as something akin to a force of nature which would always obey certain natural laws regardless of man’s interference, the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries tried to regulate their commerce by the help of official decrees and royal laws and financial help on the part of the government. ”

“ In few states of the Continent was a man free to seek his profit where he would; he was entangled in a network of government regulations that fixed the rules of his trade, the prices of his wares, even the articles which he might or might not consume. ”

“ We must follow living nations through their divers periods of development, and fathom the causes of the destruction of those that are dead. When we are dealing with the comparative study of the economic destinies of nations, our investigations are limited to a small number of individual nations—a further reason not to omit any, and above all, to scrutinize, as an anatomist would with his scalpel, the principle of life of those which are no more. ”