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 transportation— compared 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 Statestheir rule being that of drawing daily on the great bank provided by Nature for man's service, and paying nothing back. The 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."*

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

become more widely separated-agriculture continues in its rudest state and land, abandoned by the small proprietors, becomes more consolidated from year to year. The one is daily furnishing evidence, that protection to the people is, in fact, protection to the government itself the other, meanwhile proving, that a government which refuses to perform the duty of protection, must become daily weaker and less respected.

§ 6. Fifteen centuries since, millions of Christians rallied under a banner, upon which was inscribed the word homoousian, while other millions followed another bearing that of homoiousian — the difference between the ideas thereby expressed, being little likely to be comprehended by the masses who slaughtered one another to the extent of hundreds of thousands, with a view to the determination of the question, which of the two should represent the faith of the Christian world. A thousand years later, hundreds of thousands of honest Dutchmen gathered together under flags, bearing the words hoecks and kabbeljaws-butchering each other, as occasion offered, with the idea of thereby determining if it was the fish that took the hook, or the hook that took the fish. modern times, patriots seek to overthrow all civil government; Christians disseminate the true faith by aid of opium, spirits, and gunpowder; reformers and liberals advocate centralization *-democrats, meanwhile, growing daily in the belief of the divine origin of slavery, and the necessity for re-opening the slave trade.t

- In

The world is word-governed, unmeaning phrases being made idols of objects of word-worship-to the great profit of the large class which stand between the producers and consumers of the world-living at the cost of both. Of these phrases, some have reference to the affairs of another world, while others refer to the societary movement of the present one— prominent among the latter being those of Laisser faire, laisser passer-the

The republican government of 1848, perfected the monopoly of the Bank of France, by closing all the departmental banks. German reformers seek the creation of an overshadowing central power. Swiss reform has resulted in augmented centralization. In England, centralization has grown daily since the passage of the reform bill-important stages of its progress being found in the Bank Act of Sir Robert Peel, and the absolute subjection of India to English law.

† See ante, vol. ii., pp. 258, 259, notes.

See ante, vol. i., p. 39, note.

Rags...

Slavery. Paper.

world is governed too much that country is best governed, which is least governed- &c., &c.

That the reader may be enabled to determine for himself, what is the real value of these phrases, we place again before him the following diagram:

Rocky Mountains.

Land valueless.

LAND.

Philada.

LABOR.

On the left, there is no co-ordination- the law of force alone being recognized. There, however, we find the most government

the laborer being a slave, and the trader a tyrant. On the right, the power of co-ordination is in constant exercise; yet, there it is, that government is most unfelt the laborer being free, and his employer respecting his rights. Such being the case, the law would seem to be, that that country is best governed in which the co-ordinating power is most on the alert for the removal of the various obstacles by which the societary circulation is liable to be impeded the first and greatest of which is the necessity for effecting changes of place, with its oppressive tax of transportation. Prominent among the societary operations in which it has been proposed to apply the doctrine of laisser faire, stand those having reference to a public provision for individuals unable to help themselves Mr. Malthus having assured his countrymen that all laws having that end in view, tended to depress the general condition of the poor, by increasing the population without increasing the food required for their support. He, therefore, urged the gradual, but total, abolition of the system-failing, however, to suggest any mode, by means of which that which was the duty of all should be performed by all; and leaving us, therefore, to find in mendicity the only means of providing for the lame and the blind, the deformed and the diseased. Following in his lead, M. Ricardo told his readers, that such laws were pernicious; that they promoted early and improvident marriages; that