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That is not the way things come about: we grow into a new point of view: only afterwards, in looking back, do we see the landmarks of our progress. Thus it is customary to say that Adam Smith dates the change from the old mercantilist economy to the capitalistic economics of the nineteenth century. But that is a manner of speech.
It will be remembered that many seventeenth-century statesmen had urged their kings to make laws for the greater prosperity of industry, and that Colbert had given the classic expression in France to the mercantilist idea that wealth could be cultivated by regulating and encouraging manufactures.
So far as the colonies were concerned, they were brought within the scope of mercantilist ideas by being considered as sources of supply for England in products not possible to raise at home, as markets which must be reserved for British manufacturers and traders, and as places which must not be allowed to develop any rivalry to British producers.
Rather it was thought best that the colony should confine itself to the production of raw materials, leaving it to France to supply manufactured wares in return. The mercantilist doctrine that a colony existed for the benefit of the mother country was gospel at Fontainebleau.
The old mercantilist policy was giving way to early industrialism: a thousand unconscious economic and social forces were compelling the change. Adam Smith expressed the process, named it, idealized it and made it self-conscious. Then because men were clearer about what they were doing, they could in a measure direct their destiny.
The king endeavored to encourage industry and trade by enforcing up-to-date mercantilist regulations, and, although he repeatedly expressed contempt for current culture because of what he thought were its weakening tendencies, he nevertheless prescribed compulsory elementary education for his people.
How these changing conditions were dealt with by mercantilist statesmen, we shall see in later chapters. The effect on agriculture had been less direct but no less real. The land had to be tilled with greater care to produce grain sufficient to support populous cities and to ship to foreign ports.
These may be, it is true, extreme cases of the economic motive for immigration. But they are quite in line with eighteenth century Mercantilist economic philosophy. Josiah Tucker, for example, in his Essay on Trade, 1753, urges the encouragement of immigration from France, and cites the value of Huguenot refugees. "Great was the outcry against them at their first coming.
The chief concern of the mercantilist was the framing of such governmental regulations of trade as would deter colonial commerce or industry from taking a turn which conceivably might lessen the prosperity of the British manufacturers or shippers, on whom Parliament depended for taxes. Of the colonial industries which were discouraged for this reason, two or three are particularly noteworthy.
In the eighteenth century the "mercantilist" craze for seizing new markets and shutting out all possible rivals brought about most of the wars that desolated Europe. In the years 1880-1890 the great Powers put forth sustained and successful efforts to avert the like calamity, and to cloak with the mantle of diplomacy the eager scrambles for the unclaimed lands of the world.
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