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 manufac turers. 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 London, 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 origi nally both invented and propagated this doctrine, cannot be doubted; and they who first taught it were by no means such fools as they who believed it. In every country, it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question, had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people." 1 "Such as they were, however, those arguments [in favor of the protective system] convinced the people to whom they were addressed. They were addressed by merchants to parliaments and to the councils of princes, to nobles and to country gentlemen, by those who were supposed to understand trade, to those who were conscious to themselves that they knew nothing about the matter. That foreign trade enriched the country, experience demonstrated to the nobles and country gentlemen, as well as to the merchants; but how, or in what manner, none of them well knew. The merchants knew perfectly in what manner it enriched themselves: it was their business to know it. But to know in what manner it enriched the country was no part of their business. The subject never came into their consideration. But, when they had occasion to apply to their country for some change in the laws relating to foreign trade, it then became necessary to say something about the beneficial effects of foreign trade, and the manner in which those effects were obstructed by the laws as they then stood. To the judges who were to decide the business, it appeared a most satisfactory account of the matter when they were told that foreign trade brought money into the country, but that the laws in question hindered it from bringing so much as it otherwise would do. These arguments, therefore, produced the wished-for effect." 2 No sooner had Smith come to the discussion of a class of men whom he despised, than his doctrines of Free-Trade were thrown to the winds. Mankind, he says in effect, are divided into two classes, knaves and fools; merchants forming the first. "Their interest," he tells us, "is directly opposed to that of the great body of the people." How? It is certainly for the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell the cheapest. Such a sentiment, so plain, he tells us could not have been called in question but for the sophistry of merchants and manufacturers, who tell the people that they should not buy where they can buy cheapest, but where they must buy dearest. But why should not merchants buy where they can buy cheapest? The lower 1 Wealth of Nations, Book iv. Chap. iii. 2 Wealth of Nations, Book iv. Chap. i. |