the position of every community in which industrial development has still to be accomplished, and yet adopts the doctrine of laisser faire-manufactures being to the societary machine exactly what the bolts are to the ship. Turkey and Jamaica, Ireland and India, having been forced into its adoption, the result is seen in the facts, that the power of co-ordination has ceased to exist; that land and labor are almost valueless; that the over-population. theory finds there its most available material; and that they steadily decline in their power to maintain commerce with the world—that decline being attended by corresponding increase in the proportions borne by the countries which follow in the lead of Colbert and of France.* Looking to the almost innumerable papers on various questions in social science, that crowd our daily, weekly, and other journals, and seeing the manner in which the words civilization, freedom, democracy, and the like, are used, the reader of Goethe is forcibly reminded of the following passage, in his tragedy of Faust: - "Mephistopheles. Here, again, it is best to attend but one master, and swear by his words. Generally speaking, stick to words; you will then pass through the safe gate into the temple of certainty.' "Student. But there must be some meaning connected with the word.' "Mephistopheles.—Right; only we must not be too anxious about that; for it is precisely where meaning fails, that a word comes in most opportunely. Disputes may be admirably carried on with words; a system may be built with words; words form a capital subject for belief; a word admits not of an iota being taken from it.'""" Of all the terms in common use among modern economists, there is not even a single one in regard to the real value of which they are at all agreed, and hence it is, that we find them recommending the same treatment for diseases of an exactly opposite character. England suffers under the system denounced by Adam Smith, as certain to convert her whole people into a mass of shopkeepers and manufacturers. America suffers under one that almost forbids the existence of manufactures, yet is the free trade remedy prescribed for both.-What, however, is this freedom of trade? Does it consist in having but one market to which to go, as is the case with Ireland and India; or a thousand, as is the case with France and Belgium? Can there be any freedom of trade, in the absence of manufactures, and can manufactures be now built up, in the absence of protection? All experience says, that they cannot. CHAPTER LIII. THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. Of the Commerce of the World. § 1. THE man whose faculties remain undeveloped, can maintain but little commerce. His ideas being few in number, he can have little intercourse by means of speech or correspondence. His power over nature being small, he has few commodities to offer in exchange for those he needs. The man of high development the real MAN on the contrary, can have commerce with nature in all her forms, animate and inanimate. Abounding in ideas, he is fully provided with the means of maintaining commerce with his fellow-men-giving them out at one moment by means of writing or of speech, and absorbing them at another by help of eye or ear. Go where he may, he finds occasion for augmenting his stock of knowledge-the power of accumulation being here, as every where, in the direct ratio of the rapidity of circulation. So, too, is it with societies-their power to maintain commerce with the world being dependent, altogether, upon the development of the various individualities of their many members, and consequent development of the latent powers of the earth. Purely agricultural communities, like the pauper, maintain intercourse where they must-those which are highly developed doing so, on the contrary, where they will. Look, therefore, where we may, we shall find evidence of the truth of the great general principle, that the power to maintain commerce is in the direct ratio of the perfection of the organization-that, in turn, becoming more complete as the power of co-ordination is more discreetly exercised. § 2. Organized bodies grow from within, and the greater their growth, the greater is their power to absorb and digest the elements by which they are surrounded — applying them to their own support, and afterwards giving them out in the form best fitted for general circulation. So is it with men -the man of high development seizing upon and digesting every new idea, and thus preparing himself for further commerce with those with whom he is connected. So, too, is it with societies-those in which trade, manufactures, and agriculture are combined in due proportions, being always ready to take in the productions, mental or material, of other climes - to combine them with their own, and thus give new value to the labors of all, whether near or distant. Brute matter, on the contrary, grows only from withoutbeing susceptible of no increase except by aggregation. So is it with men - those whose mental faculties are torpid, being dependent upon their powers of appropriation, and the instrument they use being muscular force alone. So, too, is it with purely agricultural communities-constant exhaustion of the soil producing a necessity for appropriating other lands, to be in their turn exhausted. Growing from within, highly organized communities find among themselves all the means required for increasing and extending their internal commerce. France, and all the countries that follow in her lead, making their own roads, creating their own local centres, and thus fitting themselves for a prosperous existence, were they even wholly debarred from intercourse with the outer world. Purely agricultural communities, on the contrary, like Ireland, India, Portugal, Turkey, Brazil, and Mexico, find themselves compelled to go abroad when they seek to make roadsbecoming, from year to year, more dependent upon foreign commerce, and the foreign traders by whom it is performed. So, too, is it with the United States. At times, their policy has looked to home development, and then they have made roads, and created local centres, without the need of foreign loans. As a rule, however, their policy has been adverse to the promotion of internal growth- the consequences exhibiting themselves in a growing necessity for seeking abroad the means of making roads at home-in a growing dependence upon foreign trade and traders and in a constant thirst for the annexation of distant lands. § 3. With growth of power in the individual man, for the maintenance of exterior commerce, the necessity for it declines-the love of home growing with the increase of family ties, and with the love of science and of books. So, too, is it with societies — the necessity for exterior intercourse diminishing as the power for its maintenance is increased by means of diversification of employments, and development of the latent powers of their people, and of their various soils. Around us, every where, we find evidence that the powers of man are in the inverse ratio of his necessities—the former growing with every step towards increase of combination, and the latter doing so with every stage in the progress towards isolation. Seeking proof of this, we may turn to any of the advancing communities of the world, past or present. The power of Athens grew with the development of internal intercourse. It declined, as domestic commerce became less rapid, and as her dependence upon external intercourse became more complete. The great development of British external commerce followed closely upon the growth of the internal one - the latter having owed its existence to a protective system of the most stringent character.French external commerce has almost quadrupled in the last thirty years having grown from an average of 1,000,000,000 francs, in the ten years ending in 1835, to 5,000,000,000, in 1857.*-The *The growth in the total amount of French imports and exports, in dollars, has been as follows: Since the completion of her railroad connections with Belgium, Prussia, Germany, and Switzerland, France has attracted a large share of the ocean trade of the interior of Europe, diverting it from its former channels, England and Holland. Thus does the system which looks to internal development tend to triumph over that of the two European countries which look exclusively to trade. How domestic and foreign commerce aid each other, and how extraordinary is the growth of that power which results from growing combination of action, is thus exhibited in a paper read at the meeting of the British society for the advancement of science, recently held at Leeds: "There was reason to believe that during the six years, on railways alone, there had been actually expended in France nearly thirty millions sterling a year-an amount not far short of what led to our railway difficulties. There had also been the Russian war, a failure of the silk crop, and two partial failures of the harvest. How, then, had all this expenditure been kept up? Here was the real cause. The official returns showed that, since 1845, the balance of trade had been very much more than one hundred millions sterling in favor of France-the demand for French goods having come from the United States and Australia, through the gold discoveries." foreign commerce of Russia, in the free trade period ending in 1824, averaged, as we have seen, but $32,000,000. Growing gradually by means of measures promotive of interior growth, it had risen, at the opening of the Crimean war, to $75,000,000. The domestic exports of Belgium, in 1828, amounted to only 156,000,000 francs. By 1850, they had become 263,000,000, and in 1856, 375,000,000-the export of food from that little country, with its four and a half millions of people, having, thus, been greater than the American average, in the decade ending in 1855-embracing, as it did, the periods of the Irish famine, and the very deficient crops of Germany and France. Belgium, however, follows the advice of Adam Smith, in combining her food and wool in the form of cloth, and thus enabling it to travel cheaply to the most distant countries. Spain, impoverished as she has been by the "warfare" of the smugglers of Gibraltar, and by repeated revolutions, increased her exports from 71,000,000 reals, in 1827, to 166,000,000, in 1852. Germany, as we have seen, increased her demand for cotton, from less than 400,000 cwts., in 1836, to almost 1,400,000 in 1851 her total imports, in the same period, having risen from $105,000,000 to $185,000,000.-Sweden, too, followed in the same direction-exporting to the extent of more than $34,000,000 in 1853, against less than $14,000,000 in 1831. In all these countries we find evidence that the power to maintain commerce with the world at large, grows with the growth of commerce at home-the power of digestion and assimilation being in the direct ratio of organization. Turning now to Ireland, Portugal, Turkey, India, and Jamaica, we meet the reverse of this- the power to maintain exterior commerce gradually dying away, as the internal commerce ceases to exist. Looking next to Mexico, Peru, Buenos Ayres, and other portions of the Western Continent, in relation to which it was M. Canning's boast, that he had called them into existence, we find them to have declined in their importance their power to make a market for the exterior world being, probably, less than it was when they were mere colonies of Spain. - § 4. Coming now homewards, we may inquire what it is, that has given to the more than thirty States the power to maintain VOL. III.-29 |