144 Benjamin Franklin [1769 
the manufacturer. But the advantage of manufac- 
tures is, that under their shape provisions may be 
more easily carried to a foreign market; and, by their 
means, our traders may more easily cheat strang- 
ers.” Few, where it is not made, are judges of the 
value of lace. The importer may demand forty, and 
perhaps get thirty, shillings for that which cost him 
but twenty. 
12. Finally, there seem to be but three ways for a 
nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the 
Romans did, in plundering their conquered neigh- 
bours. This is robbery. The second by commerce, 
which is generally cheating. The third by agricul- 
ture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real 
increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind 
of continual miracle, wrought by the hand of God in 
his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his 
virtuous industry. 
! Franklin does not, probably, intend to be literally understood as 
recommending a system of defrauding foreigners; the benefit he pro- 
poses from manufactures does not, by any means, amount to this. 
Nobody considers it cheating to obtain from a domestic purchaser 
more for a thing than it costs the vender to make it. The most 
scrupulous mercantile morality does not proscribe profits. The au- 
thor has elsewhere stated, that gain is the great motive of commerce. 
He can only mean what he has elsewhere stated, that the nation ex- 
porting manufactures has the means of carrying on a more profitable 
foreign trade, which it may do as long as there are few competitors in 
effecting sales. But the other reason mentioned immediately before, 
in favor of exporting manufactures, namely, that it gives an opportu- 
nity of exporting the products of more labor, is of much greater 
importance than the chance of making extraordinary profits; a chance 
which has been very much diminished by the diffusion of the manufactur- 
ing arts, since this article was written.—W. PHILLIPS.