74 The Rise of Free Trade in Western Europe
ashes, rags, sand for glass and firewood (Germany), ship timbers (Austria), rose
madder (the Netherlands), and silk cocoons (Italy). The restrictions on exports of
ashes and timber from Germany had conservation overtones. The industrial
revolution in Britain led further to prohibitions on export of machinery and on
emigration of artisans, partly to increase the supply for local use, but also to
prevent the diffusion of technology on the Continent. We return to this below.
What was left in the policy of supply after the Napoleonic Wars quickly ran down.
Prohibition of export of raw silk was withdrawn in Piedmont, Lombardy, and Venetia
in the 1830’s, freedom to export coal from Britain enacted in the 1840’s. Details of
the relaxation of restrictions are recorded for Baden as part of the movement to
occupational freedom. The guild system gradually collapsed under the weight of
increasing complexity of regulations by firms seeking exceptions for themselves and
objecting to exceptions for others. A number of Prohibitions and export taxes lasted
to the 1850’s—as industrial consumers held out against producers, or in some cases,
like rags, the collectors of waste products. Reduction of the export tax on rags in
Piedmont in 1851 produced a long drawn-out struggle between Cavour and the industry
which had to close up thirteen plants when the tax was reduced. To Cavour salvation
of the industry lay in machinery and the substitution of other materials, not in restricting
export through Leghorn and Messina to Britain and North America.
Elimination of export taxes and prohibitions in nineteenth-century Europe raises
doubt about the universal validity of the theory of the tariff as a collective good,
imposed by a concentrated interest at the expense of the diffuse. The interest of
groups producing inputs for other industries are normally more deeply affected
than those of the consuming industries, but it is hardly possible that the consuming
is always less concentrated than the producing industry.
II
The question of export duties sought by domestic manufacturers on their raw
materials, and of import duties on outputs demanded by producers for the domestic
market, was settled in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century in favor of mercantile
interests. These were divided into the First Hand, merchants, shipowners and bankers;
the Second Hand, which carried on the work of sorting and packing in staple
markets, and wholesaling on the Continent; and the Third Hand, concerned with
distribution in the hinterland. Dutch staple trade was based partly on mercantile
skills and partly on the pivotal location of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and other staple
towns dedicated to trade in particular commodities, largely perishable,
nonstandardized and best suited to short voyages. The First Hand dominated Dutch
social and political life and opposed all tariffs on export or import goods, above a
minimum for revenue, in order to maximize trade and minimize formalities. From
1815 to 1830 when Holland and Belgium were united as the Low Countries, the
clash between the Dutch First Hand and Belgian producers in search of import
protection from British manufactures was continuous and heated.
The First Hand objected to taxes for revenue on coffee, tea, tobacco, rice,
sugar, and so on, and urged their replacement by excises on flour, meat, horses