… is from David Hume’s essay “Of Commerce” (here from page 263 of the 1985 Liberty Fund collection of some of Hume’s essays, edited by the late Eugene Miller, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary) (original emphasis):
[R]easoning will let us see the advantage of foreign commerce, in augmenting the power of the state, as well as the riches and happiness of the subject. It encreases the stock of labour in the nation; and the sovereign may convert what share of it he finds necessary to the service of the public.
DBx: Because trade restrictions – even ones sincerely imposed exclusively for purposes of national security – reduce the wealth of the nation, the national-security exception to the case for free trade must be used prudently. Otherwise the resulting slowing of economic growth might well prove over time to be itself a danger to national security. Unfortunately, politics is a profession that encourages imprudence.
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Hume died on this date, August 25th, in 1776.
