Bonus Quotation of the Day…

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… is from David Hume’s 1742 essay “Of the Balance of Trade” (here from pages 314 of the 1985 Liberty Fund collection of Hume’s essays, edited by the late Eugene Miller, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary) [original emphasis; footnotes deleted; the Heptarchy is the term for the independent Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in England from the fifth to the ninth centuries AD]:

And no doubt, had the Heptarchy subsisted in ENGLAND, the legislature of each state had been continually alarmed by the fear of a wrong balance; and as it is probable that the mutual hatred of these states would have been extremely violent on account of their close neighbourhood, they would have loaded and oppressed all commerce, by a jealous and superfluous caution. Since the union has removed the barriers between SCOTLAND and ENGLAND, which of these nations gains from the other by this free commerce? Or if the former kingdom has received any encrease of riches, can it reasonably be accounted for by any thing but the encrease of its art and industry? It was a common apprehension in ENGLAND, before the union, as we learn from L’ABBE DU BOS, that SCOTLAND would soon drain them of their treasure, were an open trade allowed; and on the other side the TWEED a contrary apprehension prevailed: With what justice in both, time has shown.

DBx: Fear of so-called “trade deficits” is as rational as is fear of witches. And declaring that persistent trade deficits are a national emergency makes no more sense than would declaring that the prevalence of witches in our midst is a national emergency.