Abstract
In this chapter, Michael Quinn argues that although Bentham’s only works on international trade were discussions on “the balance of trade” and “colonial trade,” these works reveal several new aspects of Bentham’s broader political economy. Like Smith, Bentham considered international trade to be mutually beneficial and strongly criticized mercantilist fallacies concerning balance of trade and the fetishization of precious metals. However, Bentham’s views differ from Smith’s on the issues of paper money and inflation. The chapter explains Bentham’s struggles to combine elements of both commodity and credit theories of money in a coherent package.
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Notes
- 1.
The other mercantilist attitudes, in regard to which it is difficult to see where Bentham would have disagreed with Smith, concerned on one hand its elevation of producers’ interests over those of consumers, as influential manufacturers and merchants filled the policy agenda with restrictions on trade and bounties on domestic production and export which raised prices; and, on the other, its almost exclusive focus on profits, to the exclusion of consideration of wages. See Winch (1996, 109–112).
- 2.
The Navigation Acts restricted trade between Britain and her colonies to British shipping and manned by sailors forming a reserve of manpower for the Royal Navy.
- 3.
Both Dome and Deleplace and Sigot argue that Bentham abandoned the Annuity Note scheme altogether, though for different reasons (Dome 2004, 85; Deleplace and Sigot 2012, 758–759). This is not strictly correct. As late as 5 August 1801, that is while deeply engaged in drafting ‘True Alarm’, far from abandoning the scheme, and though recognizing that unless it succeeded in displacing an equal quantity of private paper from the circulation, the considerable benefits of the scheme would be outweighed by its inflationary consequences, he argued that those benefits were sufficient to demand that ‘the quantity of private paper should, from time to time, be subjected to ulterior retrenchments by positive law’ (BL Add. MSS 31235. 70; Bentham 2019b6, 55n). In 1820, when advised that the new liberal government in Spain would be interested in his thoughts on monetary reform, he suggested that the scheme might be adopted there if steps were taken to accommodate its provisions to local circumstances (UC xxii, 261; Bentham 2019c8).
- 4.
In their masterly discussion, Deleplace and Sigot (2012, 737–738) quote an inventory of the materials with which Bentham equipped Dumont in December 1802, where ‘Political Economy. Ballance of Trade’ is discretely listed as the sixth item (Bentham 1988b, 163n), but three other sections definitively drafted for ‘True Alarm’ are also discretely listed, as the second, fourth and fifth items, so any inference that discrete listing implies separate work would be unwarranted.
- 5.
The full set of such statements is as follows: ‘Je ne comprens pas trop’ (MS Dumont 51, 79); ‘Non capio’ (MS Dumont 51, 100, 111, 132, 133); ‘Omissis non intellectis’ (MS Dumont 51, 101); ‘Je n’y entens rien’ (MS Dumont 51, p. 105); ‘Je ne comprens pas’ (MS Dumont 51, 106); ‘Je ne suis pas au fait’ (MS Dumont 51, 106); ‘Je ne vois pas la force’ (MS Dumont 51, 111); ‘[L]e MSS est si difficile que je n’ai pu le dechiffrer complettement’ (MS Dumont 51, 117); ‘Cette matière est si nouvelle pour moi je n’ai aucune Idée ici’ (MS Dumont 51, 123).
- 6.
The omitted Chapters were Chapter V, ‘Examination of the question of fact—another false supposition of the mercantile system’; Chapter VII. ‘Falsity of the fact demonstrated by the quantity of gold and silver imported into Europe’; Chapter XII ‘Other sources or error’; and Chapter XIII. ‘The theory of balance considered in its entirety’. All four will be restored in the published version of the essay, which, like ‘The True Alarm’, will appear in the final volume of Bentham’s Writings on Political Economy.
- 7.
See the ‘Report of the House of Lords Committee appointed to enquire into the Causes which produced the Order in Council of 26th February last’ [i.e. 1797], in Lords Journals (1796–1798) xli. 186–262. Thomas Irving (1738?–1800), civil servant, Inspector-General of the Imports and Exports of Great Britain, and of the British Colonies 1786–1800. On Irving, see McCusker (1997, 131–149).
- 8.
All quotations from Dumont’s texts are my translations.
- 9.
For sterling work in this direction, see Benjamin Bourcier’s contribution to this volume.
Bibliography
Manuscript Sources
BL Add. MSS—British Library, Additional Manuscripts.
MS Dumont—Bibliothèque de Genève, Manuscrits Etienne Dumont.
UC—Bentham Papers in the Library of University College London.
Print Sources
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———. 2019b. Writings on Political Economy Volume IV: Circulating Annuities and other writings on National Debt. Preprint. https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/Writings_on_Political_Economy_Volume_V_Preliminaries_and_preliminary_text_files_1-2_5-15_/10110860. The online volume consists of discretely paginated files, so page references in this chapter are specific to the following discrete works therein:
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———. 2019b2. On the Stock Note Plan.
———. 2019b3. Circulating Annuities: Exhibiting a Plan for the Creation, Circulation and Payment, of a Proposed New Species of Government Paper Currency Under the Name of Annuity Notes.
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———. 2019c. Writings on Political Economy V. Wealth, Money, and Prices; Including Thoughts on Paper Money, Defence of a Maximum, and Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy, ed. M. Quinn. Preprint. https://rdr.ucl.ac.uk/articles/Writings_on_Political_Economy_Volume_V_Preliminaries_and_preliminary_text_files_1-2_5-15_/10110860. The online volume consists of discretely paginated files, so page references in this chapter are specific to the following discrete works therein:
———. 2019c1. Thoughts on Paper Money. Shewing the Mischiefs Flowing from It—Including Its Share in the Present Pressure—Together with an Indication of the Remedy.
———. 2019c2. Marginal Contents for ‘The True Alarm; or, View of Paper Money—Its Good Effects, Bad Effects, and Their Remedies, and Its Connection with Real Wealth’.
———. 2019c3. “Discussion sur le papier monnaie à propos une ouvrage d’H. Thornton.”
———. 2019c4. Defence of a Maximum, in Answer to the Arguments on That Head in a Pamphlet of 1800 Attributed to a Late Secretary to the Treasury.
———. 2019c5. Method and Leading Features of an Institute of Political Economy (including Finance) Considered Not Only as a Science, but as an Art.
———. 2019c6. Unsent Letter to a Newspaper: ‘Paper and Gold’.
———. 2019c7. Paper Money for Spain.
———. 2019c8. Appendix to ‘Paper money for Spain’.
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Quinn, M. (2024). Bentham via Dumont on the Balance of Trade. In: Bourcier, B., Jakonen, M. (eds) British Modern International Thought in the Making. International Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45713-5_10
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