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terms like trade liberalisation, open market, and free market are also used and do have similar connotations to the above defined terms. This paper however, will not attempt an analysis or definition of these terms. Their mention in passing is made to stress the plethora of terms and conceptions that come up in the analysis of the increasingly politico-economic phenomenon of international trade.

Curtiss (n.d.) has observed that:
"If there is one point of fairly general agreement among economists throughout the world and throughout time, it is that trade should remain free from all sorts of governmental restrictions and interventions. It would seem unnecessary to repeat over and over why the material welfare of individuals is enhanced through the division of labor and freedom to trade."

Bacchetta and Jansen (2003) also contend that the idea in economics about countries benefiting from trade with one another is one of very less contention.

The above propositions capture the optimistic stance that proponents of freer international trade adopt in their elucidation of the theoretical justifications of international trade, and these propositions may perhaps set the tone for the discussion of the theories that justify international trade in this section of the paper. The theoretical justification of international trade emanate from the works of two classical economists Adam Smith and David Ricardo.

In Adam Smith's 1776 book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations the theory of specialisation was birthed. He reasoned that:
"It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family, never to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy. The tailor does not attempt to make his own shoes, but he buys them from the shoemaker. The shoemaker does not attempt to make his own cloths, but employs a tailor. The farmer attempts to make neither the one nor the other, but employs those different artificers. All of them find it for their interest to employ their whole industry in a way in which they have some advantage over their neighbours, and to purchase with a part of its produce, or what is the same thing, with the price of a part of it, whatever else they have occasion for. What is prudence in the conduct of every private family, can scarce be folly in that of a great kingdom. If a foreign country can supply us with a commodity cheaper than we ourselves can make it, better buy it of them with some part of the produce of our own industry, employed

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