220 PROCEEDINGS OP THE AMERICAN ACADEMY. 



Now, in proof that a moral habit has of necessity been engendered in 

 the conduct of this traffic, it is a well established fact that it would not 

 be worth twenty-five cents on a hundred dollars for the nation to 

 guarantee the prompt payment of every obligation or trust incurred in 

 the process of this trade. The dealers, the bankers, the merchants, 

 could not afford to jjay a guarantee of twenty-five cents on a hundred 

 dollars. 



You will bear in mind, by the way, that all that any man can get in a 

 material sense in this life by means of this method of production and dis- 

 tribution is his board and clothing, no matter how rich he is. But into 

 that branch of the subject I do not propose to enter. 



I have said that the very existence of society can only be conceived on 

 the basis of this mutuality of the service of commerce. Its benefits are 

 gained in exact proportion to the freedom of trade, whether among the 

 people of one country or between countries. Protective tariffs have to 

 some extent interfered with commerce between this and other countries, 

 and have given for the time being a misdirection to a small part of our 

 energy. On the other hand, absolute freedoui of trade among the States 

 has been assured by the constitutional provision thereto. 



Now, what are the facts developed under this system, which have be- 

 come " admitted truths requiring no further proofs," and may therefore 

 be taken as the basis of a principle ? The people of this country have 

 enjoyed absolute free trade among the greater number and over a lai-ger 

 area than have ever enjoyed that natural condition before. What is their 

 condition relatively to other countries ? The resources of the European 

 continent are as great as those of our country. The resources of South 

 America, with perhaps the exception of coal, on which I am not informed, 

 are as great as those of North America. Yet the material progress of 

 the people of the United States puts all other countries or nations in the 

 shade. It has been vastly greater. Moreover, it is becoming an admitted 

 truth, requiring no further proof since the publication of Wright's Report 

 on Prices and Wages for Fifty-two Years, that under the influence of 

 these conditions those who perform the manual, mechanical, and farm 

 work of this country — the working classes, in the narrow sense — have 

 secured decade by decade an increasing proportion of a constantly in- 

 creasing product, and have become the most prosperous people in the 

 world, taken as a whole ; better served in every respect with railways 

 and waterways, and wliile numbering only five per cent of the popula- 

 tion of the globe, consuming between thirty-three and forty per cent 

 of the iron, steel, and copper ; twenty-eight per cent of the cotton ; 



