she must tempt us to take more of them by reducing their price. She must sell her manufactures cheaper, not only to the United States, but to China, Java, Brazil, and Cuba, and thus obtain more tea, coffee, and sugar, which she can offer to us at rates so low as to increase our consumption of them to the required extent. These articles being in universal use, the reduction in their cost to us will be more than a compensation for the additional 10 per cent which we must pay for cotton, wool, and iron manufactures. Our domestic manufactures being thus restored to a prosperous condition, and many additional hands being required, as well as more capital, to prosecute them, the competition in agriculture will be slackened, and the price of our agricultural exports will naturally rise. Our sale of raw cotton will not be diminished, because the reduced price of cotton manufactures in Europe will increase the consumption of that article there more than enough to make up for a slight reduction of the quantity sold in the United States.

The statement of these principles may seem novel; but a little reflection will satisfy us, that we have long been familiar with the operation of them on a large scale. How is it that England has been able to extend her manufacturing enterprise to its present vast dimensions, except by reducing the price of its products so low as to cut off by competition the rival manufactures of every country in Europe, Asia, and America, that has not been wise enough to foster its domestic industry by a protective tariff? While her own industry and skill were not developed enough to enable her to defy rivalry, she maintained as rigid a system of protective and prohibitive duties as was established in any country on earth. One of the just complaints which ultimately produced the American Revolution, was, to adopt the language of Lord Chatham, that "England should not suffer her colonies to manufacture even a horseshoe for themselves." She then obtained the raw products of her own colonies on easy terms, by prohibiting them from selling to any other customer than herself; and those of other countries she bought at prices almost as low, by carefully keeping her purchases from them within the narrowest possible limits, so that they were compelled to sell cheap in order to sell enough to pay for their imports. Afterwards, when so much

capital and skill were embarked in her manufactures that they no longer dreaded competition, her protective system was abolished; after her defensive armor was no longer needed, she put it off, and endeavored to persuade other nations, whose education in skill and industry had hardly begun, to do the same, consoling them for the consequent ruin of their domestic enterprises, by the assurance that she could manufacture for them cheaper than they could manufacture for themselves. The only point forgotten in this argument was, that their purchase of English manufactures would be thereby so much increased, that they would be obliged to sell their own raw products on the lowest possible terms in order to pay for them.

I borrow from an English authority a clear statement of the limitations under which alone the theory of free trade is applicable. "If all the countries of the globe were actually, or were ready to become, constituent portions of one and the same great family, the theory of the free-traders might seem plausible. But the plain truth is, that the whole analogy is forced and unnatural. By treating the human race as one great family, we are not following, but departing from, the apparent design of Providence, as indicated in the dispensations which everywhere present themselves to our observation. In these we are totally unable to discover any trace of this ideal incorporation. Separated by natural and defined boundaries, often by broad tracts of ocean; differing even in physical organization; inhabiting portions of the earth's surface varying in temperature from the fervid heat of the torrid zone to the almost unendurable cold of the arctic reigons; above all, absolutely unintelligible to each other by variety of language; -the Deity seems to have stamped on the features of nature and of humanity, in unmistakable characters, that nations shall remain separate and distinct, each pursuing, under the restraints only of moral obligations and just laws, its own separate interests; and thus, in beautiful harmony with the similar arrangements among individuals of the same nation, each, however unconsciously, contributing to that general good which is but the aggregate of the separate good of its parts."*

* Quart. Review, No. CLXXI. p. 86. It would be easy to quote many similar admissions made by those who supported the policy of Sir Robert Peel in abolishing the English corn laws. Thus, the Hon. G. Smythe, in a speech at Canterbury in 1847,

The situation of the United States is so peculiar, that arguments drawn from European experience for the guidance of our conduct are apt to be wholly fallacious and unsound. We can more profitably go for a lesson to the other side of the habitable globe, — to a country even more widely separated than we are, by a waste of ocean, from the arts and industry of England and her European rivals; - I mean, to British India. There we find a deficiency of capital, an abundance of fertile territory, a consequent surplus of agricultural produce, and a lack of that skill in manufacture which can only be gained by long experience under a strict protective policy, such as England has enjoyed for nearly two centuries; - all these circumstances strongly reminding us of corresponding features in our own condition. Now, the Governor-General of India, in a correspondence with the East India Company on the subject of the Dacca weavers, makes this statement: "Some years ago, the East India Company annually received of the produce of the looms of India to the amount of six to eight million pieces of cotton goods. The demand gradually fell, and has now ceased altogether. European skill and machinery have superseded the produce of India. Cotton piece-goods, for ages the staple manufacture of India, seem for ever lost; and the present suffering to numerous classes in India is scarcely to be paralleled in the history of commerce."

I have introduced this example especially because it throws light upon another reason, already urged in another place (pp. 191, 192), for the establishment of a protective policy, in America as well as in India; - I mean, the great difference in the cost of transportation between raw materials and manufactured goods, which operates greatly to the advantage of the country producing the latter, because manufactures have much the greater value in the smaller weight and bulk. Rice, wheat, cotton, and sugar are among what might be called the greatest natural exports of India, as they are produced there very

remarked: "I cannot quit this subject of Free Trade without expressing my opinion on its abstract principle. I by no means hold that the principle of Free Trade is absolutely true, or that it is of universal application. If I were an American, the citizen of a young country, I should be a Protectionist. If I were a Frenchman, the citizen of an old country with its industry undeveloped, I should equally be a Protectionist."

cheaply in great abundance. The average price of wheat at Calcutta is less than fifty cents a bushel; but the freight and other charges of transporting that bushel to England, and selling it there, amount to about eighty cents. England, therefore, though she has abolished her corn laws, enjoys a virtual protective duty against wheat from India, amounting to 160 per cent. The cost of transporting English manufactured goods to India cannot, on an average, exceed 40 per cent of their value. The difference between these two rates, amounting to 120 per cent, is, of course, really prohibitive in its effects; and India. wheat is not brought to England at all. The difference in the cost of transporting raw materials and manufactured goods across the Atlantic is certainly not so great as in sending them round the Cape of Good Hope; but it is enough to give a very important advantage to the traffic to England. Our chief article of export, raw cotton, is a very bulky one; and even breadstuffs and tobacco are more expensive, both for land and sea carriage, than the cheapest manufactures of the loom. I speak of the carriage by land as well as sea, because the greater part of the raw material that we export is raised far in the interior, and the cost of bringing most of it to the Atlantic coast far exceeds that of carrying it over the ocean. On the other hand, our chief articles of import from Great Britain, with the possible exception of pig and bar iron, are of the finer species of manufacture, and therefore contain great value within little weight and bulk. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to estimate the average charges of transportation of so many different articles; but it would be perfectly safe to consider the difference as twenty per cent on the whole value of the goods in favor of England; that is, as an English protective tariff to that extent. In other words, if we send a million of dollars' worth of raw material to England, we must pay thirty per cent on its value for carriage, before it is admitted; while, on a million of dollars' worth of fine manufactured goods received in exchange, the English have to pay but ten per cent. Consequently, on the very principles of free trade, which means nothing but trade with equal advantages to the two parties, we ought to levy a general protective duty of twenty per cent.

One other consideration in favor of what may be called the American system must be mentioned, because it affords an

answer to an argument frequently and strenuously urged on the other side. It is said that a protective duty raises the cost to the consumer, not only of those goods which are imported, and which therefore pay the duty, but of those also which are manufactured within the country, and sold at an enhanced price, because they are in a great measure protected against foreign competition. I have already alluded to two facts, which do away with most of the force of this argument; -namely, first, that a protective duty, being designed as a check to injurious fluctuations of price, is graduated with reference to the lowest price at which the foreign commodity is ever sold, and not with reference to the average price. Thus, a duty of thirty, may not raise the average price more than fifteen per cent, and this last may be the whole amount of real protection that the American manufacturer needs; but to secure this protection at all times, the duty must be fixed at thirty per cent, because circumstances may sometimes force the foreign commodity upon the market at a price fifteen per cent below its ordinary value. And secondly, it has just been shown that the English manufacturer, in order not to lose altogether his hold upon the American market after the duty is imposed, is obliged to lower his price, so that, in fact, he pays from one half to three fifths of the duty, instead of throwing the whole of it upon the American consumer.

But further, this expression "forcing upon the market" points to another fact of frequent occurrence in trade, which demonstrates the necessity of placing a check upon excessive imports. The reaction of a commercial crisis in England, making dealers there eager to get rid of a large quantity of goods at almost any price, or the beginning of such a crisis. in America, when the speculative fever tempts importers to accumulate stocks to a ruinous extent, may cause a glut in our market of many commodities at once, depressing the value of the whole exchangeable produce of the country to a degree far beyond the proportion which the stocks of those commodities bear to the aggregate of that produce. We have seen that the abstraction of a third part of the ordinary supply may double the price, or fail to raise it more than one sixth, according as the article is one of prime necessity, or one which people can easily do without. So the addition of a third to the ordinary