121
Campomanes, Apéndice 4: pp. iii-xxxi; Carrera, 3: 644 650; Cabarrús, Cartas, 130. Cabarrús also defends free trade with the American colonies in his Discurso sobre la libertad de comercio concedida por S. M. a la América meridional. Leydo en junta de 28 de Febrero de 1778, Memorias de la Sociedad Económica [Matritense] 3: 282-294, 1787. Jovellanos, D 25.vii.96, 2: 264, refers with admiration to Smith's arguments for free colonial trade. The Spanish domestic grain trade had theoretically been freed in 1765, but de facto restraint during the remainder of the century gives point to the complaints of the reformers (Hamilton, War and prices, 191-200; cf. Leonhard, 27).
122
Apéndice 4: pp. xxxvii, lvii ff; Ind. pop., 145. Cantillon, 19-20, likewise considers exports a way for laborers to subsist «aux dépens de l'Etranger».
123
Hamilton, Uztáriz, 115-126; Ward, Proyecto, 35-36 and passim; Cantillon, passim; Necker, 30, 98.
124
Voto particular sobre permitir la introducción y el uso de muselinas (1784 or 1785), O 2: 47-49; Muselinas 5: 109a-113a; Campomanes, Apéndice 2: pp. xxxix-xli n. 10. The argument for preferring Asiatic imports is also found in Cantillon, 315-317, and Ward, Proyecto, 292. It presupposes a mercantilistic concept of wealth and a stress on relative wealth as a source of national power.
125
Informe sobre extracción de aceites (1774), O 2: 3b. Campomanes, Educación, 386-387, also believes that agricultural production is limited by markets and therefore disagrees with those concerned only with supplying the home market cheaply: agriculture can yield an exportable surplus. Campo manes seeks a favorable balance of trade; the exports he envisages are not products that could become the raw materials for foreign manufactures.
126
Carrera, 4: 49-66, 458; Hamilton, War and prices, 191-200; Carande, 358. On the prevalence throughout Europe of a policy of provision with respect to grain see Heckscher, 2: 91 ff.
127
Condillac, Commerce, I: xxii and passim; Ward, Proyecto, 93-94. Ward goes to the opposite and equally illiberal extreme of applauding a system of export bounties on grains.
128
The discussion of grain exports in the Informe de ley agraria begins on 2: 114b. MSA 2 contains fairly extensive notes on Necker's essay Sur la législation et le commerce des grains, including the following points stressed in the Informe: the unreliability of theory in the face of experience (Necker, Introduction: i), the danger of panic (Necker, I: xiii). Missing are the notes on the first chapters of Part III, in one of which (iii) Necker criticizes price indices as regulators of exports (cf. LA 2: 115b). Necker's proposed regulations, also extracted by Jovellanos, closely resemble those suggested in the Informe. Prados, 268, suggests that the latter is chiefly indebted in this respect to an Ensayo sobre la policía general de los granos, sobre sus precios y sobre los efectos de la agricultura [sic] published anonymously but probably translated from the French. If this work, however, was published in 1795, as both Prados and Carrera, 4: 458, indicate, it could have influenced the Informe de ley agraria only if Jovellanos knew it in manuscript. The work has not been accessible to me, but if it should turn out to draw on Necker that alone would explain the similarities between it and the Informe. Finally, MSA 2 also contains a draft which may be compared with LA 2: 114b ff, and which I reproduce herewith, resolving all abbreviations but otherwise preserving Jovellanos' punctuation and orthography: «[Heading:] Extraccion de granos [Text:] La sociedad no entrarà aqui à examinar, y menos à decidir el gran problema que presenta la libre extraccion de granos: materia à la verdad tan importante como intimamente enlazada con el fomento de la agricultura. Conoce que esta question pide un examen mui detenido, muchos calculos que estan por hacer, muchos supuestos - - El producto de nuestras cosechas, la poblacion de nuestras provincias, el calculo de la porcion de ella que consume unos y otros granos: todo esto deberia saberse, y se ignora. Por otra parte sin canales, sin caminos, sin navegacion, sin capitales ni comercio en la mayor parte de nuestros puertos, el monopolio, favorecido por la distribucion politica de nuestras propriedades seria acaso tan facil como funesto entre nosotros. Prescinde pues la sociedad de esta gran question reservandose à examinarla de proposito, quando tenga los conocimientos indispensables y de que ahora carece.
Pero entretanto no puede prescindir de la necesidad de establecer por todo el reino la libertad del comercio interior de los granos, sin lo qual la ruina de la Agricultura será infalible. Esta proposicion, tantas veces demostrada, como puesta en duda» [interrupted]. The adhesion to a system of regulation which we find in the published version was evidently pre ceded by a good deal of hesitation and followed, as we have seen, by private disclaimers.
129
According to Instrucción a la Junta Especial de Hacienda (1809), O 2: 77, these means are to be determined by calculating not the number of inhabitants, since many of these are unproductive, but the product of «nuestra industria rural, fabril y mercantil», i. e., what we should call the national product. Thus Jovellanos favors taxes proportioned to ability to pay over taxes levied on a strict per capita basis.
130
LA 2: 119b, 121b. Cf. Martínez Marina, 283 ff, on unlawful privileges of the clergy with respect to taxation. For later accounts, see Leonhard, 33-34, 49; Herr, 89-90, 110.