not hold in the case of a community, which has only a fictitious unity, and is really made up of many individuals, who may distribute among themselves all the employments which are requisite for the production of all the commodities that the society needs. No one person is thus required to practise more than one art, and the division of labor among these individuals is as perfect, as if the same number of trades were partitioned out among so many distinct communities. Still more; as communities are separated from each other often by broad tracts of sea or land, should each one confine its industry to the production of a single commodity, and purchase whatever else it needs from rival states, all its articles of consumption but one would come to it burdened with a considerable cost of transportation; and the sale of its own single product everywhere but at home would be impeded by an addition to its cost from the same cause. All the advantages of a division of labor result from a separation of employments among individuals, and become disadvantages in the case of distinct states, counties, and even towns. To one who is a blacksmith, it is no help, but rather a hinderance, that his nextdoor neighbor is a blacksmith also; he has thus a competitor in satisfying the wants of his own village, where every mechanic finds his best and most profitable customers; and as blacksmiths' work is heavy, he cannot carry his wares for sale even to the next county or town without lessening his profits. The inhabitants of every country town understand their own interests much better than Adam Smith did. Instead of forming themselves into a settlement composed exclusively of artisans of one trade, each community has its own mason, shoemaker, carpenter, shopkeeper, lawyer, doctor, and clergyman, and is thus not obliged to send a dozen or twenty miles in order to have a horse shod, a chimney built, a tooth pulled, or a marriage celebrated. A Yankee farmer with half a dozen

* I am not detailing imaginary cases. Mr. Rae, who lived a long time in Canada, says: "I knew two brothers whose farms or estates lay in one of the interior districts of that country, in the midst of its forests, and consequently at a considerable distance, perhaps twenty or thirty miles, from artificers of any description. Having each of them large families and productive farms, they had occasion for the services of various artificers, and had the means of paying them. Nevertheless, they very rarely employed them; almost every article they required was made by some one of the two families. As they were prudent and sagacious men, of which they produced the best

stout sons, acts upon the same principle, in not educating them all to his own employment, but making a mechanic of one, a merchant of another, a sailor of a third, sending a fourth to college, and keeping only one at home to be his own successor upon the farm. As all occupations are precarious, he knows that, by this course, he multiplies the chances of success, or reduces the chances of failure, for the whole family, besides suiting each member of it with an employment best adapted to his peculiar powers and inclination.

Adam Smith's illustrations are fallacious, because they are drawn from extreme cases, in regard to which no one would think of denying the correctness of the maxim, and are then applied as if it were correct in every instance, though the universality of the principle is the only point in question. Thus he argues: "By means of glasses, hot-beds, and hot-walls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine, too, can be made of them, at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines, merely to encourage the making

evidence in the general success of their undertakings, and the prosperity of the settlement of which they were at the head, I think it likely that, in this also, they had turned their means to the best account. In fact, as they who are familiar with the details of beginning settlements in North America will admit, by this plan they in a great measure obviated the two chief drawbacks on the prosperity of new and remote settlements, the excessive dearness of every article not produced there, from the great expense attending the transport of the raw produce and retransport of the manufactured goods, and the serious inconvenience arising from the difficulty, in such situations, of supplying, when necessary, unforeseen but pressing wants.

"Among other things which they got made on their own farms were boots, shoes, and leather. That they might get this done, they were at the pains and expense of sending one of the young men to some distance, to make himself sufficiently master of those trades for their purpose. They thought, however, that the cost they were thus put to was repaid, thrice over, by the saving of time and expense which it effected for them, in enabling them to make, out of leather which cost them very little, numerous articles that they must otherwise have been constantly sending for to a great distance, by roads that were almost impracticable a great part of the season." A Free-Trader, continues Mr. Rae, would certainly have remarked to these two heads of families: "You are in want, you say, of some pairs of shoes; surely, then, it is best for you to purchase them at the place where you can get them cheapest. But by the plan you are taking, of going to a great expense to have them made at home, they will certainly cost you more when made there, than if bought at the place where you have hitherto purchased shoes."

Any one can judge whether such advice would have been sound.

And

of claret and burgundy in Scotland?" Certainly not. it would also be manifestly absurd to attempt to raise tea, coffee, pineapples, and other tropical products, in New England. We here labor under natural disabilities, arising from peculiarities of soil and climate, which time and practice can never remove or essentially diminish. But Americans can profitably raise and manufacture iron, steel, wool, cotton, flax, and silk, for the production and fashioning of which we have as great advantages as the English, and even greater, skill and capital alone excepted. We can therefore profitably spend time, labor, and money in the acquisition of that skill and capital; that is, we can profitably submit, for a certain number of years, to an additional tax for this purpose, appearing in the additional price which we must for a while pay for the domestic products.

We may turn Adam Smith's favorite mode of illustration against himself, by asking if it be not as reasonable for a nation, as it confessedly is for an individual, to enter upon a course of education, or serve an apprenticeship, — though, during the period of discipline, the gains will be small, the labor severe, and perhaps the expenses heavy,- for the purpose of acquir ing an art or handicraft which may afterwards be exercised with great profit. We suppose that the art is one for which the individual or the nation is sufficiently qualified by nature, so that merely the tact and dexterity which can only be acquired by practice are wanting. The common answer of the advocates of free trade to this question, that when the proper time has arrived, and sufficient capital has been accumulated, manufactures will introduce themselves, without the aid of protective duties,' is evasive and insufficient. It goes upon the supposition, that want of capital is the only obstacle to the immediate commencement of manufacturing enterprise, whereas skill is also requisite; capital, we admit, may be accumulated in agriculture and other pursuits; but skill can be acquired only by actual experiments in manufacture, and those experiments can be tried only at considerable sacrifice. Individuals cannot be expected to submit to these sacrifices, when the results of the experiment, if successful, will not accrue to their exclusive advantage, but will be open to all. In truth, the acquisition of manufacturing skill is a national advan

tage, though it invariably occasions a loss to the individual who, first in his nation, attempts to acquire it; it is therefore justly paid for at the national expense, or by a protective duty, which insures the beginners for a limited time against overwhelming competition from abroad.

Even in Great Britain, where free trade may now be said to be the fashionable doctrine, though it has become so only within the last fifteen years, and in every other civilized nation, these principles are carried into practical application through the encouragement afforded to authors and inventors, by securing to them for a limited period the exclusive right to sell their respective writings and discoveries. Patents and copyrights, which no one thinks it improper to grant, are signal instances of the successful application of the principles of the protective system. They are strict monopolies, no one but the author or inventor, and his agents, being allowed to manufacture or sell the particular book or machine which is thus protected. Consequently, they are prohibitive rather than protective duties; any price can be set upon the articles which the owner of the patent or copyright sees fit to demand. And the public cheerfully pay the addition thus made to the natural cost of the commodity, knowing that, without such encouragement, few good books would be written and few useful machines invented, and that, at the expiration of a limited time, (in England and the United States, fourteen years for a patent and forty-two years for a copyright,) the right to make and vend the work will become general, and the community will then be the richer by the whole value of the original proprietor's genius and labor. But he who first introduces a particular art or manufacture into a country is as great a public benefactor, as one who subsequently invents a new process or a new machine for executing the work at less cost. In fact, it is only through the enterprise of the former that the latter acquires a field and an occasion for the exercise of his inventive genius. To the capitalists who built the city of Lowell, is fairly attributable much of the merit of the inventions which have been made in it, or have there first been reduced to practice; and these are probably more numerous and valuable than have been made within the same time in any manufacturing city in the world. According to the census of 1850, the introduction of

the cotton manufacture into the United States has given employment to nearly 100,000 persons, and that of iron to more than 60,000. What single invention made within the limits of this country has had equally important results, or has been carried out at equal hazard and sacrifice?

The reasonableness of granting patent rights and copyrights is thus frankly admitted by an able advocate of free trade, Mr. J. S. Mill. "The condemnation of monopolies," he says, "ought not to extend to patents, by which the originator of an improved process is permitted to enjoy, for a limited period, the exclusive privilege of using his own improvement. This is not making the commodity dear for his benefit, but merely postponing a part of the increased cheapness which the public owe to the inventor, in order to compensate and reward him for the service. That he ought to be both compensated and rewarded for it will not be denied; and also, that if all were at once allowed to avail themselves of his ingenuity, without having shared the labors or the expenses which he had to incur in bringing his idea into a practical shape, either such expenses and labors would be undergone by nobody, except by very opulent and very public-spirited persons, or the state must put a value on the service rendered by an inventor, and make him a pecuniary grant. This has been done in some instances, [as when Parliament offered a reward of £ 20,000 for a method of finding a ship's longitude at sea], and may be done without inconvenience in cases of very conspicuous public benefit; but in general, an exclusive privilege of temporary duration is preferable, because it leaves nothing to any one's discretion, because the reward conferred by it depends upon the invention's being found useful, and the greater the usefulness the greater the reward, and because it is paid by the very persons to whom the service is rendered, the consumers of the commodity.*

Having conceded thus much, Mr. Mill finds himself obliged by consistency of reasoning to make the following additional admission, which really covers the whole ground usually claimed by the advocates of a protective system in the United States. "The only case," he says, "in which, on mere principles of Political Economy, protecting duties can be defensible,

* Mill's Political Economy, Vol. II. p. 497.