that the raw material of his new home should be worked up, in part at least, upon or near the spot where it was grown. He would understand that to undertake its manufacture, exposed to the competition which he would be sure to encounter from the mother country, would be fatal to him, unless he were protected by some law or impost duty which would give him. the home, or a part of the home, market. He would gladly make any personal sacrifice, if this would avail. As it would not, he appeals to the community in which he lives to unite with him in making it, by paying him higher rates for what he may produce than they would be compelled to pay for the imported article. He is supported by the colonists, from a conviction that his success will promote their advantage by increasing the prices of their products, by adding to their numbers and their means of consumption. They might, to be sure, believe that when manufactures became well established among them the impost duties might be removed, their imposition being only a temporary expedient. The same men, therefore, are Free-Traders in one country and Protectionists in another. To say that either doctrine is absolutely true is to beg the question altogether. There is the same reason for affirming each to be true under certain conditions. To prove the superiority of Free-Trade, the home manufacturer must show that it is for the interest of the colonists to allow him to work up their raw material, and send back the finished product. The Australian or the Canadian replies that his country can never come to any thing so long as its products are restricted to wool or wheat. The conviction and reason on one side are as strong as they are in the other. The Protectionist, struggling for something better, and prepared to make great sacrifices to secure it, is certainly more fitted to enlist sympathy than the Free-Trader, who stands ready to crush out every rival by means of the experience, training, and capital he has acquired. The age of Protection, therefore, is the heroic one, the age of self-sacrifice, of achievement: that of Free-Trade, of realization, of enjoyment, in other words, of selfishness. The one bears the same relation to the other that the ardor, generosity, and sympathy of youth bear to the cold, calculating selfishness of wealth and age.

It may be urged, that, all things being equal, freedom of trade would promote the highest condition of the race. But

all things can never be equal. One nation or community will, in some particulars, either from situation, natural resources, a greater abundance of capital, or a better trained industry, always excel others; so that the same disparity of conditions witnessed to-day is likely to prevail for all future time, dividing the world, as it is now, into two great camps, each using the same arguments with those now urged. While neither of the two doctrines-Free-Trade or Protection can be shown to be of universal application, or reconciled the one with the other, the latter is the more liable of the two to abuse; as it is, compared with Free-Trade, a positive and active principle, and as it is supported by far the greater number of communities or nations. It is often made the pretext for the creation, by government, of odious and oppressive monopolies. When excessive, it is liable to give a most unhealthy impulse to the industries of those adopting it, and become most vexatious by raising prices of many articles far beyond the reach of the working or laboring classes. As a rule, individuals are wiser as to the industries they may pursue, and the methods by which these may be conducted, than governments. The latter, consequently, should be very careful in interposing in such matters. The tendency of the age is in striking contrast with the protective spirit, which, hardly a generation ago, prevailed among every people in matters of education, religion, and opinion, as well as in those which related to production and trade. The sentiment which inspired such interference was dictated, not so much by a desire to promote the welfare of the people, as to merge all power in the hands of government. Protection in matters of trade, therefore, is now regarded with suspicion as an instrument of oppression and as a relic of barbarism. This tendency favors the free articulation of every individual in what concerns his own welfare. It increases in strength with the progress of mankind in intelligence and morals. The condition of the great mass of humanity is almost infinitely superior to what it was, even a few generations ago, when art, religion, government, education, personal freedom, were monopolies, the result of an exclusively protective spirit. As FreeTrade is certain to have the support of those who have made the greatest progress, it is constantly gaining strength at the expense of Protection, in having for its advocates those who from their wealth and intelligence give direction to the ideas

and sentiments of mankind. The reason why no progress is made in determining the relative value of the two systems, is because the question, as treated, is an insoluble one. Argument leaves the question precisely in the condition in which it is taken up; and is no more likely to dispose of it than are the deliberations of peace societies to put an end to war. No argument can convert a nation to the doctrines of Free-Trade whose condition does not, without argument, beget such sentiments; or to the opposite doctrine, one who does not feel in its condition the necessity of Protection.

For merchants and manufacturers Smith had a contempt as great as ever that felt by Plato or Aristotle. They were the authors of all the illiberal doctrines in reference to commerce, and of all the restrictions imposed upon it. From these the nobility and gentry learned what little they knew. This contempt may have not a little to do with his ideas as to the insignificance of money.

"The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen," he says, "are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his goods always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

By such maxims as these, however, nations have been taught that their interest consisted in beggaring all their neighbors. Each nation has been made to look with an invidious eye upon the prosperity of all the nations with which it trades, and to consider their gain as its own loss. Commerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity. The capricious ambition of kings and ministers has not, during the present and the preceding century, been more fatal to the repose of Europe than the impertinent jealousy of merchants and manufacturers. The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit, of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are nor ought to be the rulers of mankind, - though it cannot perhaps be corrected, may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquillity of anybody but themselves."1

The impotent spite which dictated this incoherent passage borders very nearly upon untruth. It was the underling, the 1 Wealth of Nations, Book iv. Chap. iii.

shopkeeper, -the impersonation, with Smith as with Aristotle, of baseness and selfishness, who directed and controlled the policy of nations, who taught them that their advantage was best promoted by beggaring all their neighbors. How did these underlings get at the ears of kings and courtiers, and instil into their minds such pernicious doctrines? In the very same breath, he tells us that merchants and manufacturers neither are nor ought to be the rulers of mankind. Whether its rulers or not, they are the class which, throughout the ages, has nurtured and sustained the spirit of freedom, without which there could have been neither material progress nor moral life. Without these classes, a despotism must have prevailed so universal and inexorable that the race itself must have become extinct or savage. A nation is rich, intelligent, and free in ratio as it collects within and appropriates to itself, not only the products, but the ideas and methods, of all other lands. The story of foreign countries, of their inhabitants, their institutions, their wealth, of their physical aspects, so inviting or so terrible, excites the imagination, and gives an impulse to enterprise and adventure that faces every danger, and triumphs over every obstacle. It is the school which trains the individual to deeds of heroic daring and faith, and which develops and perfects the highest faculties of his nature. The story of the Argonautic Expedition, whether fabulous or true, exerted a most powerful influence over the pursuits, the ideas, and the imagination of the Greeks, and was one of the means which helped to raise that people to its high place among the nations. With the Northmen, a love of nautical adventure was both the outgrowth and support of that spirit of freedom which so distinguishes them from all other races, and modern from ancient society. By means of it, the moral, as the intellectual qualities of the race have alike been nurtured and strengthened. To come down to modern times, who in England first welcomed that great reformation in religion which gave to the nation a new consciousness and a new life? The commercial and industrial classes. Who met and overthrew the Great Armada, and saved their country from a foreign yoke? The merchants of England, with ships fitted out and manned at their own cost. Who preserved her liberties in the great crisis in which those of all other nations were overthrown, and when the Stuarts sought to model her consti

tution after the despotism of France? The tradesmen and tradesmen's clerks, the train-bands of London. Who contributed most to expel that odious dynasty, and restore to their country her liberties; who have made England another England; and who, if the enemies of progress are to be believed, have subverted her constitution by restoring to it its original spirit? The merchants of Lond, the same who founded the Bank of England, which so earnestly and efficiently sustained the government in preventing the return to power of that detested family. Who, within the memory of the living, carried through those great reforms which gave to the people cheap food, and removed those social and political distinctions which had so long been a disgrace to the nation? Its merchants and manufacturers, so well known as the Manchester School. The tendency of agricultural pursuits, from the iteration of seasons and employments, is to so limit the range and deaden the faculties that, were there no other pursuits, the race, if it had ever risen by other helps, would become a mere machine, would lose all aspiration and capacity for progress, and relapse into brutal stolidity. The merchant, on the other hand, creates his conditions. With him, nothing is fixed: every thing is changing. He adds to and enlarges his ideas by constant contact with all lands and races. His ventures are stimulated by the possibility of gains far beyond those usually falling to the lot of the tiller of the soil. His profession demands the constant exercise of the highest qualities; the combination and execution of great plans; a knowledge of the character, wants, and means of those with whom he has to deal, and of the condition of trade and the money markets throughout the world. His field is the world. He soon learns, instinctively as it were, if he be fitted to become a great merchant, that his success must be in ratio to his probity. It is for these reasons that the merchant is necessarily the highest type of a man of affairs. There is no morality like mercantile morality; for nowhere else is morality so indispensable to success, or exercised on so grand a scale. We do not admire the force that draws a pin to the earth; but we stand in awe of that which directs the motions of the planets, and holds them within their appropriate spheres.

"That it was the spirit of monopoly," says Smith, "which originally both invented and propagated this doctrine, cannot be