| Summary: | By the mid-eighteenth century politicians were well accustomed to arguments about the advantages derived from trade. Pitt's famous dictum, "When trade is at stake you must defend it or perish," echoed views that had inspired the Navigation Laws a century earlier. Since the sum of world trade was limited, trade warfare was necessary to increase the British share of world prosperity, a prosperity which could only come about, according to the "bullionist" theory that still held sway, when Britain imported more gold than she exported. Matthew Decker put the matter succinctly in his ...
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