Quotation of the Day…

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… is from page 431 of Rick Atkinson’s remarkable 2025 book, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777-1780, which is the second volume of Atkinson’s Revolution Trilogy:

Yet prosperity was slow to return to Philadelphia. Before the war, a coaster carrying merchandise arrived in port almost daily; now it was closer to monthly. Royal Navy cruisers and loyalist privateers dominated the Delaware capes, paralyzing trade…. “Goods are exceedingly scarce here,” a trader reported, “and will sell at any price a man’s conscience will let him take.”

DBx: If protectionists are correct to assert that a country becomes wealthier when a government restricts its citizens’ access to goods from other countries, the British would have unintentionally done the American revolutionaries a favor by restricting Americans’ access to imports. Reports from Philadelphia would have noted the growing abundance of goods and the fall in their prices. But the opposite happened.

Now, if only there were some body of knowledge to explain why Philadelphians were made poorer by having their access to imports restricted.