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… is from page 30 of Jacob Viner’s classic 1937 Studies in the Theory of International Trade [2]; in particular, the following quotation is from the opening chapter on the history of mercantilist thought, entitled “English Theories of Foreign Trade, Before Adam Smith I”:
Also if Englishmen were sparing in their consumption of even domestic goods, there would result, it was claimed [by mercantilist thinkers], either unemployment or the piling-up of unsold and perishable commodities, unless the surplus stocks of domestic goods were exported abroad. Small imports and large exports were therefore a necessary adjunct of thrift and enrichment….
Protests against the importation of “apes and peacocks,” “toys and baubles” recur throughout the mercantilist period and were already common in the sixteenth century.