458 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



stantially be the product of twelve hours' hand-labor in Mexico for one 

 hour's labor with machinery in the United States. A Committee of 

 Ways and Means of the United States House of Representatives of 

 the Forty-ninth Congress have rej>orted adversely to the ratification of 

 a commercial treaty with Mexico, mainly for three reasons : First, be- 

 cause Mexico is so poor ; second, because " the American citizen living 

 in Mexico, and pursuing the peaceful avocations of industry and com- 

 merce, is without adequate protection to life and property "; third, be- 

 cause " to speak of permanent and desirable commercial relations with 

 a government and people so estranged from us in sentiment is without 

 promise of substantial and successful results." The first of the rea- 

 sons is economic, the second political, while the third, having due re- 

 gard to its meaning, may be well termed "Mongolian"; and all are 

 unsound. The poor countries are the very ones with which it is espe- 

 cially desirable that the United States should cultivate trade, for, if 

 the volume of trade be small, the profit of such trade is large as is 

 always the case where the results of rude or hand labor are exchanged 

 for machinery product. If the facts constituting the basis for the 

 second reason are as alleged, commercial isolation and restriction are 

 no remedy for them. Commercial intimacy between nations is always 

 productive of political good-fellowship, as isolation and restriction are 

 of enmity ; and for promoting amity with Mexico the modern drummer 

 is likely to prove, for the present, a far better missionary than either 

 the diplomatist or the soldier ; and, as for the third, one might think 

 that a precedent had been borrowed by the committee from China, 

 where commercial intercourse with the United States itself, in com- 

 mon with Europe, was, until very recently, combated on the ground 

 that the inhabitants of these countries were "foreign devils," with 

 whom the enlightened Chinese ought not to be brought in contact. 



Such, then, in conclusion, are the views of the writer respecting the 

 present and future relations of the United States to Mexico. If he 

 has offered anything, in the way of fact or argument, which may in- 

 duce a belief, by people of the former, that the subject is worthy of a 

 larger and more kindly consideration on their part than it has hitherto 

 received, he will feel that his "Economic Study" has not been wholly 

 unsatisfactory. 



* 



THE EXTENSION OF SCIENTIFIC TEACHING * 



By Professor T. H. HUXLEY. 



ONCE more reverting to reminiscence, the present state of scientific 

 education surely presents a marvelous and a most satisfactory 

 contrast to the time, well within my memory, when no systematic prac- 



* From the President's Address before the Royal Society, delivered at the Anniversary 

 Meeting, November 30, 1S85. 



