TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION.
ABOUT five years ago, when the works of Friedrich List were republished and widely circulated in Germany, the Berlin correspondent of the ‘Times’ took occasion to comment on the powerful influence which those works were then exercising in that country in favour of the adoption of a protective commercial policy.
It was this testimony to the practical influence of List’s economical theories which first attracted my attention to his writings, and a perusal of them induced me to undertake the translation of the following work, with a view to affording English readers an opportunity of judging for themselves as to the truth of his statements and the soundness of his arguments.
The work consists of four parts—the History, the Theory, the Systems, and the Politics of National Economy. It is important to bear in mind that all were written before 1844, and the fourth part in particular treats of political circumstances and of commercial policies which have now for the most part ceased to exist. The Corn Laws, the Navigation Laws, and the generally protectionist tariff of Great Britain were then still unrepealed; the manufacturing industry of Germany was still in its infancy, and the comparatively moderate tariff of the German States still permitted England to supply them with the greater part of the manufactured goods which they required.
At first sight, therefore, it would seem an anachronism to place before the reader of to-day a work having special relation to a state of things which existed forty years ago. The principles, however, enunciated by List are in their main features as applicable at one time as at another, and it will be found that they possess two especially powerful claims to consideration at the present moment.
In the first place, there is good reason for believing that they have directly inspired the commercial policy of two of the greatest nations of the world, Germany and the United States of America; and in the next, they supply a definite scientific basis for those protectionist doctrines which, although acted upon by our English-speaking colonies and held by not a few practical men as well as by some commercial economists in this country, have hitherto been only partially and inadequately formulated by English writers.
The fundamental idea of List’s theory will be seen to be the free import of agricultural products and raw materials combined with an effective but not excessive protection (by means of customs duties) of native manufacturing industry against foreign competition. According to his views, the most efficient support of native production of agricultural products and raw materials is the maintenance within the nation of flourishing manufacturing industry thus protected. The system which he advocates differs, therefore, on the one hand from the unconditionally free import system of one-sided free trade adopted by England, and on the other from the system now apparently approved by Prince Bismarck, of imposing protective duties on the import of food and raw materials as well as on that of manufactured goods.
In fact, List draws a sharp line of demarcation between what he deems a truly ‘political’ economy and the ‘cosmopolitical’ economy of Adam Smith and his followers (English and foreign), and he vigorously defends a ‘national’ policy as opposed to the ‘universal trade’ policy which, although nearly forty years have elapsed since its adoption by England, has failed to commend itself in practice to any other civilised country.
In combating what he regarded as the mischievous fallacies of the cosmopolitical theory, List occasionally denounces with considerable asperity the commercial supremacy then exercised by England. But, so far from being an enemy of England, he was a sincere admirer of her political institutions and a warm advocate of an alliance between this country and Germany. ‘England and Germany,’ he wrote, ‘have a common political interest in the Eastern Question, and by intriguing against the Customs Union of Germany and against her commercial and economical progress, England is sacrificing the highest political
objects to the subordinate interests of trade, and will certainly have to rue hereafter her short-sighted shopkeeper policy.’ He further addressed to the English and Prussian Governments a brief but forcible essay ‘On the Value and Necessity of an Alliance between Great Britain and Germany.’
In translating the work, my aim has been to render the original as literally as possible. I have neither attempted to abridge my author’s tautology nor to correct his style, and where passages are emphasised by italics or capital letters they are so in the original. Those, and they are probably many in this country, who are prepared to accept some or all of List’s conclusions, will prefer to have his theories and arguments stated in his own way, ungarbled and unvarnished, while those who reject his doctrines may perhaps still be interested in seeing the exact form in which the intellectual founder of the German Zollverein gave his opinions to the world.
1885.
Cf. ‘England and America, 1660 to 1760,’ in
Economic Surveys, by Professor Ashley, and Dr. Cunningham’s
Growth of English Industry and Commerce, vol. ii. (edition 1903).
‘The principle of retaliation is reasonable and applicable only if it coincides with the principle of the
industrial development of the nation, if it serves as it were as an assistance to this object’ (p. 255).
Memoir, by J. Shield Nicholson
Abridged from
Friedrich List, ein Vorläufer und ein Opfer für das Vaterland. (Stuttgart, 1877.)
Chapter I