Government Subsidies
Dublin Core
Title
Government Subsidies
Creator
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi
Source
New Principles of Political Economy
Date
1819
Text Item Type Metadata
Text
"Already governments have frequently been called upon to support a manufacture which was threatened with ruin; and the more gluts in the market increase, the more the embarrassment of the manufacturer increases, the more frequently will this assistance be called for. Now, the suspension or the absolute cessation of work in a manufacture for which there is no longer any sale, is a first step towards the diminution of general suffering; the government ought, in fact, to come to the assistance of men, and not of industry; it ought to save its citizens, and not business. Far from making advances to the master manufacturer, [221] to encourage him to manufacture to a loss, it ought largely to contribute funds to take the operatives from an employment which increases the embarrassment of all their fellow citizens. It ought to employ them in those public works whose products do not bear upon the markets, and do not increase the general glut. Public edifices, town-halls, markets, public walks, are native wealth, though not of a kind that can be bought and sold. Immense quantities of land may be recovered from water, on the sea-shore, along rivers, and by draining marsbes; the fertility of whole provinces may be doubled, quadrupled, by works of irrigation, which by means of canals circulate over the plains water borrowed from rivers; and to make these improvements throughout the whole extent of France, and which would cover it with a network of running water, might well employ, not only her industrial classes, but a quarter of her inhabitants for a long time to come."
Collection
Citation
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi, “Government Subsidies,” History of Economics, accessed April 17, 2026, https://www.historysandd.margobergman.org/items/show/47.