The Effect of Regulations fixing the Manner of Production

The interference of the public authority, with regard to the details of agricultural production, has generally been of a beneficial kind. The impossibility of intermeddling in the minute and various details of agriculture, the vast number of agents it occupies, often widely separated in locality and pursuits, from the largest farming concerns to the little garden of the cottager, the small value of the produce in comparison with its volume, are so many obstacles that nature has placed in the way of authoritative restraint and interference.

All governments, that have pretended to the least regard for the public welfare, have consequently confined themselves to the granting of premiums and encouragements, and to the diffusion of knowledge which has often contributed largely to the progress of this art.

The veterinary college of Alfort, the experimental farm of Ramboullet, the introduction of the Merino breed, are real benefits to the agriculture of France, the enlargement and perfection of which she owes to the providence of the different rulers that her political troubles have successively brought into power.

A national administration that guards with vigilance the fa- cility of communication and the quiet prosecution of the labours of husbandry, or punishes acts of culpable negligence, as the destroying of caterpillars 174 and other noxious insects, does a service analogous to the preservation of civil order and of property, without which production must cease altogether.

The regulations relative to the felling of trees in France, however indispensable for the preservation of their growth, at least in many of their provisions, appear in others rather to operate as a discouragement of that branch of cultivation, which, though particularly adapted to certain soils and sites, and conducive to the attraction of atmospheric moisture, yet seems to be daily on the decline.

But there is no branch of industry that has suffered so much from the officious interference of authority in its details, as that of manufacture.

Much of that interference has been directed towards limiting the number of producers, either by confining them to one trade exclusively, or by exacting specific terms, on which they shall carry on their business. This system gave rise to the establishment of chartered companies and incorporated trades.

The effect is always the same, whatever be the means employed. An exclusive privilege, a species of monopoly, is cre- ated, which the consumer pays for, and of which the privileged persons derive all the benefit. The monopolists can pros- ecute their plans of self-interest with so much the more ease

such as would never be disposed to take in either their own countrymen or foreigners? We are told that this system facili- tates the enforcement of regulations for the warranty and veri- fication of the quality of products; but are not such regula- tions illusory in practice, even under the corporate system? and, supposing them absolutely necessary, is there no more simple way of enforcing them?

and concert, because they have legal meetings and a regular organization. At such meetings, the prosperity of the corporation is mistaken for that of commerce and of the nation at large; and the last thing considered is, whether the proposed advantages be the result of actual new production, or merely a transfer from one pocket to another, from the consumers to the privileged producers. This is the true reason why those engaged in any particular branch of trade are so anxious to have themselves made the subject of regulation; and the public authorities are commonly, on their part, very ready to indulge them in what offers so fair an opportunity of raising a revenue.

Neither will the length of apprenticeship be a better guaran- tee of the perfection of the work; the only thing to be de- pended upon for that perfection is the skill of the workman, and that is best attained by paying him in proportion to his superiority. “To teach any young man,” says Smith, “in the completest manner how to apply the instruments, and how to construct the machines of the common mechanic trades, can- not well require the lessons of more than a few weeks, per- haps those of a few days might be sufficient. The dexterity of hand, indeed, even in common trades, cannot be acquired without much practice and experience, but a young man would practise with much more diligence and attention, if from the beginning he wrought as a journeyman, being paid in propor- tion to the little work which he could execute, and paying in his turn for the materials which he might sometimes spoil through awkwardness and inexperience.” 176

Moreover, arbitrary regulations are extremely flattering to the vanity of men in power, as giving them an air of wisdom and foresight, and confirming their authority, which seems to de- rive additional importance from the frequency of its exer- cise. There is, per. haps, at this time, no country in Europe where a man is free to dispose of his industry and capital in what manner he pleases; in most places he cannot even change his occupation or place of residence at pleasure. It is not enough for a man to have the necessary qualifications of abil- ity and inclination to become a manufacturer or dealer in the woollen or silk line, in spirits or calicoes; he must besides have served his time, or been admitted to the freedom of the craft. 175 Freedoms and apprenticeships are likewise expedi- ents of police, not of that wholesome= branch of police, whose object is the maintenance of public and private security, and which is neither costly nor vexatious; but of that sort of po- lice which bad governments employ to preserve or extend their personal authority at any expense. By the dispensation of honorary or pecuniary advantages, authority can generally influence the chiefs and superiors it has appointed to the cor- porations, who think to earn those honours and emoluments by their subservience to the power that confers them. These are the ready tools, for the management of the body at large, and volunteer to denounce the individuals, whose firmness may be formidable, and report those whose servility may be reckoned upon, and all under the pretext of public good. Of- ficial harangues and public addresses are; never wanting in plausible reasons for the continuance of old restrictions on liberty of action, or for the establishment of new ones; for there is no cause so bad as to be without some argument or other in its favour.

Were apprentices bound out a year later, and the interval spent in schools conducted on the plan of mutual instruction, I can hardly think the products would be worse executed; and, be- yond all doubt, the labouring class would be advanced a stage in civilization.

Were apprenticeships a sure means of obtaining a greater perfection of products, those of Spain would be as good as those of Britain. It was not before incorporated trades and compulsory apprenticeships had been abolished in France, that she attained that superiority of execution she has now to boast of.

Perhaps there is no one mechanic art nearly so difficult as that of the gardener or field labourer; yet this is almost the only one that has nowhere been subjected to apprenticeship. Are vegetables and fruits produced in less abundance or perfection?,Were cultivators a corporate body, I suppose it would soon be asserted, that high-flavoured peaches and white-heart lettuces could not be raised without a code of some hundred well penned articles.

The chief advantage, and= the one most relied upon, is, the insurance of a more perfect execution of the products raised for consumption, and of a superiority in them highly favourable to the national commerce, and calculated to secure the continued demand of foreigners. But does this advantage result from the system in question? What security is there that the corporate body itself will always be composed of men not merely of integrity, but of scrupulous delicacy, After all, regulations of this nature, even admitting their util- ity, must be nugatory as soon as evasion is allowed; now it is notorious that there is no manufacturing towns where money will not purchase exemption. So that they are more than merely useless as a warranty of quality; inasmuch as they are the engine of the mos, odious injustice and extortion.

in the rest of the city, which was subject to those institutions that are held up as so indispensable? For a very simple reason= because self-interest is the best of all instructors. In support of these opinions, the advocates for the corporate sys tem appeal to the example of Great Britain, where industry is well-known to be greatly shackled, and yet manufactures prosper.

But in this they expose their ignorance of the real causes of that prosperity.’These causes,” Smith tells us, “seem to be the general liberty of trade, which, notwithstand- ing some restraints, is at least equal, perhaps superior, to what it is in any other country; the liberty of exporting, duty free, almost all sorts of goods, which are the produce of domestic industry, to almost any foreign country and, what perhaps is of still greater importance, the unbounded liberty of trans- porting them from any one part of our own country to any other, without being obliged to give any account to any pub- lic office, without being liable to question or examination of any kind,” &c. 177 Add to these, the complete inviolability of all property whatever, either by public or private attack, the enormous capital accumulated by her industry and frugality, and lastly, the habitual exercise of attention and judgment, to which her population is trained from the earliest years; and there is no need of looking farther for the causes of the manufacturing prosperity of Britain.

An example or two will serve better than all reasoning in the world, to show the impediments thrown in the way of the development of industry by incorporations of trades and crafts.

Argand, the inventor of the lamps that go by his name, and yield, at the same expense, triple the amount of light, was dragged before the Parlement de Paris, by the company of tinmen, locksmiths, ironmongers, and journeymen farriers, who claimed the exclusive right of making lamps. 180

Lenoir, the celebrated Parisian philosophical and mathematical instrument maker, had set up a small furnace for the conve- nience of working the metals used in his business. The syndics of the founders’ company came in person to demolish it; and he was obliged to apply to the king for protection. Thus was talent dependent upon court favour. The manufacture of ja- panned hard ware was altogether excluded from France until the era of the revolution, by the circumstance of its requiring the skill and implements of many different trades, and the necessity of being admitted to the freedom of them all, be- fore an individual could carry it on.

It would be easy to fill a volume with the recapitulation of the disheartening vexations that personal industry had to encounter in the city of Paris alone, under the corporate system; and another with that of the successful efforts made, since that system was abolished by the revolution.

Those who cite her example in justification of their desire to enthral the exertions of industry, are not perhaps aware that the most thriving towns in that kingdom, those on which her character for manufacturing pre-eminence is mainly built, are the very places where there are no incorporations of crafts and trades; Manchester, Birmingham, and Liverpool, 178 were mere villages a century or two ago, but now rank in point of wealth and population next to London, and much before York, Canterbury, and even Bristol, cities of the greatest antiquity and privileges, and the capitals of her most thriving provinces, but still subjected to the shackles of these Gothic institutions.

“The town and parish of Halifax,” says Sir John Nickols, 179 a writer of acknowledged local information, “has, within these forty years, seen the number of its inhabitants quadrupled= whilst many other towns, subjected to corporations, have experienced a sensible diminution of theirs.

Houses situated within the precincts of the city of London hardly find tenants, and numbers of them remain empty; whilst Westminster, Southwark, and the other suburbs are continually increasing. These suburbs are free, whilst London sup- ports within itself four-score and twelve exclusive companies of all kinds, of which we may see the members annually adorn, with a silly pageantry, the tumultuous triumphal procession of the Lord Mayor.”

For the same reason that the free suburb of a chartered town, or a free town in the midst of a country embarrassed by the officiousness of a meddling government, will exhibit an unusual degree of prosperity, a nation that enjoys the freedom of industry, in the midst of others following the corporate system, would probably reap similar advantages.

Those have thriven the most, that have been the least shackled by the observance of formalities, provided, of course, that individuals be secured from the exactions of power, the chicanery of law, and the attempts of dishonesty or violence.

Sully spent his whole life studying and practicing measures for improving the prosperity of France, entertained this opinion. 181

In his memoirs, he notices the multiplicity of useless laws and ordinances, as a direct barrier to the national progress. 182 It may, perhaps, be alleged, that, were all occupations quite free, a large proportion of those who engaged in them would fall a sacrifice to the eagerness of competition. Possibly they might, in some few instances, although it is not very likely there should be a great excess of candidates in a line, that held out but little prospect of gain; yet, admitting the casual occurrence of this evil, it would be of infinitely less magni- tude, than permanently keeping up the prices of produce at a The prodigious manufacturing activity of some of the suburbs of Paris is notorious; of the Faubourg St. Antoine, in particular, where industry enjoyed many exemptions.

Some products were made nowhere else. How happened it, that without apprenticeships, or the necessity of being free of the craft, the manufacturer acquired a greater degree of skill, than

spondence with the sample of conditions, express or implied, must be rigidly enforced, and government should meddle with production no further. I would wish to impress upon my read- ers, that the mere interference is itself an evil, even where it is of use= 184 first, because it harasses and distresses individu- als; and, secondly, because it costs money, either to the na- tion, if it be defrayed by government, that is to say, charged upon the public purse, or to the consumer, if it be charged upon the specific article; in the latter case, the charge must of course enhance the price, thereby laying an additional tax upon the home consumer, and pro tanto discouraging the foreign demand.

rate that must limit its consumption, and abridge the power of purchasing in the great body of. consumers. If the measures of authority, levelled against the free disposi- tion of each man’s respective talents and capital, are criminal in the eye of sound policy, it is still more difficult to justify them upon the principles of natural right. “The patrimony of a poor man,” says the author of the Wealth of Nations, “lies in the strength and dexterity of his hands= and to hinder him from employing this strength and dexterity in what manner he thinks proper, without injury tc his neighbour, is a plain violation of his most sacred property.”

If interference be an evil, a paternal government will be most sparing of its exercise. It will not trouble itself about the cer- tification of such commodities, as the purchaser must under- stand better than itself; or of such as cannot well be certified by its agents; for, unfortunately, a government must always reckon upon the negligence, incapacity, and misconduct of its retainers. But some articles may well admit of certifica- tion; as gold and silver, the standard of which can only be ascertained by a complex operation of chemistry, which few purchasers know how to execute, and which, if they did, would cost them infinitely more than it can be executed for by the government in their stead.