study those departments of science from which they are little likely to derive direct advantage."

Having exhibited to his readers the benefits that have resulted from the association of men in towns and cities, and from that development of manufacturing industry which he himself regards as synonymous with diversification in the demands for labor, M. Chevalier thus continues:

"Nature has herself determined the limits beyond which this diversification may not be carried. It would be absurd for England, or for Northern Germany, to endeavor to produce at home the wines they drink; for us to try to raise the cotton that we spin, weave, and print; for Italy to pretend to draw from within herself the ice with which she seeks, in the heat of summer, to cool her thirst; for Western Europe to impose upon itself a necessity for drawing from its own poor mines, its supplies of the precious metals; or for France to refuse to manufacture any tin, copper, or zinc, but those yielded by its own particular mines. When nature, in her caprice, has refused to a country so extensive as our own, an abundance of ores and fuel, it would then be an absurdity for it to insist upon supplying all its wants from the few little veins of coal, or meagre deposits of ore, that have been scattered over it."

Within the limits thus assigned by nature, however, M. Chevalier holds, that every nation owes it to itself to seek the establishment of diversification in the pursuits of its people, as Germany and England have already done in regard to cottons and woollens, and as France herself has done in reference to so many, and so widely-different, kinds of manufacturing industry. Within these limits, he holds, that "it is not an abuse of power on the part of the Government; on the contrary, it is the accomplishment of a positive duty, so to act at each epoch in the progress of a nation, as to favor the taking possession of all the branches of industry whose acquisition is authorized by the nature of things. Governments are, in effect, the personification of nations, and it is required that they should exercise their influence in the direction indicated by the general interest, properly studied, and fully appreciated. Therefore," he continues, "I shall carefully avoid censuring Colbert in France, or Cromwell in England, for the effort to establish in his own country a powerful commercial

marine. I regard as excellent the desire of some of the eminent men of the principal nations of Europe to establish around them the various branches of manufactures, although I may not praise without distinction all the measures by them adopted for the accomplishment of their object." *

Nothing could be more accurate than this view of the duties of the government, yet is its author hostile to the maintenance of protection in France-assuring, as he since has done, the agricultural population of that country, that "raw materials, such as wool, and agriculture itself, incomparably the first of French pursuits, both by the number of persons engaged in it, and by the many interests dependent upon it, have ceased to enjoy the advantages of protection, while bearing the charges of it wherever it seeks to obtain improved machinery of cultivation, and other articles of common use."†

Is it so? Has French agriculture ceased to be protected? If it has, then should protection be abandoned. To enable us to answer this question, we must begin by inquiring why it is, that protection can be needed? Because, according to M. Chevalier himself, it promotes the conversion of raw materials into finished products. In what manner, however, does that profit the farmer? Is it not by the approximation of the consumer to the producer? Is it not by diminishing the expense of sending his goods to market, and thus lessening the tax of transportation? It certainly is so proximity of the makers of cloth making a home demand for large quantities of food and wool, and thus diminishing the quantity that must be sent to the distant market, while largely increasing the facility with which it may be sent. Does not the farmer here profit doubly realizing all the advantages indicated by Adam Smith, when describing the facility with which tons of food and wool, when compressed into cloth, may be sent to the remotest corners of the world? Assuredly he does — the farmers of France realizing the advantages of protection in the fact, that of the 1,800,000,000 francs of French products now sent, in a single year, to distant countries, at least two-thirds are products.

* Examen du Système Commerciale, connu sous le nom du Système Protecteur. Paris, 1852.

Journal des Economistes, Sept., 1856. Memorial of the Council-General of the Herault.

of the farm that never could reach those countries, unless they had been compressed together, in accordance with the sound advice of the author of the Wealth of Nations. Such being the case, it is certainly a great mistake to say that French agriculture has ceased to be protected. All the protection that agriculture, any where, requires, is that of having the market brought to its door, and thus enabling it to maintain the powers of the land while freeing itself from the one great tax of transportationcompared with which, all other taxes sink into insignificance.

Desiring to satisfy his agricultural friends how little reason they have to fear competition in the supply of foreign food to their own markets, M. Chevalier exhibits to them a very accurate picture of the exhaustive process now pursued in these United States— their rule being that of drawing daily on the great bank provided by Nature for man's service, and paying nothing back. result, as he shows, is found in the small amount of "surplus that may be applied to the satisfaction of the non-agricultural population even at home, and still more so, that which may be sent to foreign lands."*

The

We have, here, two great facts established-first, that, in the absence of domestic markets, there must be little to sell, and next, that that little must be cheaply sold, because of the heavy cost of transportation.† From both of these evils the French farmer is exempt being enabled to improve his land, while freed from the necessity for paying for transporting his products to a distance.

* Examen du Système Commerciale, p. 212.

At page 322 ante, the reader will find a comparative statement of the production of the various kinds of grain in the years 1840 and 1847-showing an increase of more than forty per cent. in the few years in which the iron, cotton, and other manufactures, made such extraordinary progress under the protective tariff of 1842. In the eleven years that have since elapsed, American policy has tended to the destruction of manufactures, as a consequence of which the number of persons employed in the principal departments of the arts of conversion is less now than it was then, and yet, the total quantity of grain produced in the current year is estimated at only 1,100,000 bushels-being but twenty-five per cent. greater than it was in 1847. In the protective periods, the increase was twice greater than that of population. In the free trade ones, it is one-fifth less than that of the numbers to be fed.-Hence it is, that the power to purchase foreign commodities decreases, as the necessity for their purchase increases- the course of affairs in the United States being precisely the same with that observed in Ireland, India, Turkey, and all other free trade countries.

† See ante, vol. ii., p. 189.

How? By that protection of which M. Chevalier so much complains that protection which, having built up manufactures, now enables the farmers of France to send abroad their products, to the extent of almost 2,000,000,000 francs, where, but thirty years since, they sent but 500,000,000.

Civilized communities follow the advice of Adam Smith, in exporting their wool and their corn in the form of cloth, at little cost for transportation. Thus, France, in 1856, exported silks and cloths, clothing, paper, and articles of furniture, to the extent of $300,000,000; and yet the total weight was short of 50,000 tons-requiring for its transport but fifty ships of very moderate

size.

Semi-barbarous countries, on the contrary, export their products in their rudest state, at heavy cost. India sends the constituents of cloth-cotton, rice, and indigo-to exchange, in distant markets, for the cloth itself. Brazil sends raw sugar across the ocean, to exchange for that which has been refined. America sends wheat and Indian corn, pork and flour, cotton and rice, fish, lumber, and naval stores, to be exchanged for knives and forks, silks and cottons, paper and China-ware. The total value of these commodities exported in 1856-high as were then the prices —was only $230,000,000; and yet, the ships engaged in the work of transport, were of the capacity of 6,872,253 tons.*

In the movement of all this property, there is great expense for transportation. Who pays it? Ask the farmer of Iowa, and he will answer, that he sells for fifteen cents—and that, too, payable in the most worthless kind of paper- a bushel of corn that, when received in Manchester, commands a dollar-giving to the support of railroads and canals, ships and sailors, brokers and traders, no less than eighty-five per cent. of the intrinsic value of his products. Ask him once again, and he will reply, that while his bushel of corn will command, in Manchester, eighteen or twenty yards of cotton cloth, he is obliged to content himself with little more than a single yard- eighty-five per cent. of the clothingpower of his corn having been taken, on the road, as his contribution towards the tax imposed upon the country, for the mainte

This is the total tonnage that left for foreign countries, in that year. A portion was required for the transport of manufactured commodities, but it was so very small as scarcely to require notice.

VOL. III.-28

nance of the machinery of that "free trade" which modern economists so much admire.

The country that exports the commodity of smallest bulk, is almost wholly freed from the exhausting tax of transportation. At Havre-ships being little needed for the outward voyage, while ships abound-the outward freights must be, generally, very low.

The community that exports the commodities of greatest bulk, must pay nearly all the cost of transportation. A score of ships being required to carry the lumber, wheat, or naval stores, the tobacco, or the cotton, required to pay for a single cargo of cloth, the outward freights must always be at, or near, that point which is required to pay for the double voyage-and every planter knows, to his cost, how much the price of his cotton is dependent upon the rate of freight.

Careful study of these facts would probably satisfy M. Chevalier that the French system tends towards increasing the quantity of commodities produced, while raising their prices - the American one, on the contrary, tending towards diminution of quantity and annihilation of price. That done, he could scarcely hesitate to admit the vast advantages to the French farmer, resulting from a system which looks to making a market upon, or near, the land, for all its products.

M. Chevalier is anxious for freedom of trade. Who has itthe French farmer, or the American farmer and planter? The one sends his food, in the form of silks and cottons, to every part of the civilized world-doing this directly, and without the intervention of any other people. The other having only raw products to sell-must go to those countries, and those only, which have machinery of conversion-being as much enslaved, as is the other free. Why this difference? Because France is a disciple of Colbert, while the American people have followed the advice of men who teach that trade is to be promoted by cheapening labor and the raw products of the earth-finding the result in a doctrine of over-population, in virtue of which, slavery is the ultimate portion assigned by the Creator to the laborers of the world. In the one, the prices of rude products and finished commodities gradually approximate agriculture becomes a science-land grows in value, and becomes divided. In the other, those prices