International Order and Economic Integration

‘Telle est la condition humaine que souhaiter la grandeur de son pays, c’est souhaiter mal à ses voisins. . . Il est clair qu’un pays ne peut gagner sans qu’un autre perde.’

Voltaire, Dictionnaire phil., art. Patrie.

‘In opposition to this narrow and malignant opinion, I will venture to assert that the increase of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours; and that a state can scarcely carry its trade and industry very far, where all the surrounding states are buried in ignorance, sloth and barbarism.

Were our narrow and malignant politics to meet with success, we should reduce all our neighbouring nations to the same state of sloth and ignorance that prevails in Morocco and the Coast of Barbary. But what would be the consequence? They could send us no commodities. They could take none from us: Our domestic commerce itself would languish for want of emulation, example, and instruction! And we ourselves should soon fall into the same abject condition to which we had reduced them. I shall therefore venture to acknowledge that, not only as a man, but as a British subject, I pray for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy, and even France itself’.

David Hume, Of the Jealousy of Trade, Essays and Treatises, I.