256 ECONOMIC PRINCIPLES

gain. The question of the capacity of the ruling authorities
to select industries, to which to apply the protective tariff
system, which both need it and are tolerably certain to prove
a real advantage to the country, needs to be taken into
account as well. If private interests are likely to have more
‘nfluence, on the decision as to the commodities on which
duties shall be placed and the amount of each duty, than the
consideration of the public welfare, the advantages, which the
system of protective duties might yield, would be in danger
of being so mingled with serious disadvantages as to be
purchased at a cost which would more than offset those
advantages,
Accepting the conclusion that, for a time, the price of a
protected commodity is raised as a consequence of the
protection, we must consider the effect on other interests
of that rise of price. The outlay, on the protected article,
of the average citizen, may be increased, unchanged,
or diminished. In either of the two last cases, and perhaps
in the first, he will have less of the goods, and will
either seek to obtain similar satisfaction to that which they
render him by the purchase of other goods, or have to endure
the reduction in his satisfactions. If he purchase other goods
in the place of those now too dear, he will pay more for equal
satisfaction, unless we are to argue that he spent his means
unintelligently before the duty was imposed, and spends them
with greater wisdom afterwards. This may be so in some
cases, but cannot be assumed as generally true, If, then,
more must be spent on the satisfactions which the protected
commodity can render, whether procured from its use or from
the use of substitutes, less will be available for other outlay.
Only in the case in which the raised price reduces the
consumption so much that less is spent on the goods than
formerly (and, pursuing the suggestion of the above, less on
them and their substitutes together) will the amount available
 for other expenditure be increased! In this case, the
decreased demand for the goods may well mean that the

+ The terms of exchange of imports for exports may be modified as a result
of duties or bounties on import or on export. The investigation of the results
would follow lines briefly indicated at the end of Chapter XIII.