ABSTRACT
Strictly speaking, there is no Act of government but what has some influence upon production. The object of governments, in their attempts to influence production, is, either to prescribe the raising of particular kinds of produce which they judge more advantageous than others, or to prescribe methods of production, which they imagine preferable to other methods. The natural wants of society, and its circumstances for the time being, occasion a more or less lively demand for particular kinds of products. Sometimes a government entertains a notion, that the manufacture of a native raw material is better for the national industry, than the manufacture of a foreign raw material. Though governments have too often presumed upon their power to benefit the general wealth, by prescribing to agriculture and manufacture the raising of particular products, they have interfered much more particularly in the concerns of commerce, especially of external commerce.
