Dudley.] 5^0 [Oct. 1, 



or American merchant deals in. And as a rule this will apply to every 

 commercial transaction in the United States, in England or in any other 

 civilized country. And with reciprocity falls another favorite doctrine of 

 the free traders closely allied to reciprocity, to wit, barter — that for every 

 import there must be an export. Mr. Mongredien, in his writings for the 

 Cobden Club of England, states it in this way : "The increased imports 

 which abolition of customs duties would bring about, would necessitate 

 increased exports to the same amount to pay for them, for there can be no 

 additional import without a corresponding export.'" 



The theory of the free traders is, that when you buy a bill of goods in 

 a foreign country and import them, they must be paid for by an export of 

 some product or commodity from the country into the one from which the 

 import came ; that an export will follow the import ; that it is a mere bar- 

 ter or trade of one product for another product. 



This theory of the free traders has been asserted so often and insisted 

 upon with so much persistency for such a period of time that they seem 

 to regard it as admitted, and not even open to criticism, much less contra- 

 diction ; and they demand that the whole world shall assent to and admit 

 it, and of course all the pernicious and false assumptions and argu- 

 ments which are based upon it. I have had occasion to comment upon 

 this subject before, in my reply to Mongredien, and pronounced it a fal- 

 lacy. I repeat it again, and say no greater fallacy has ever been attempted 

 to be palmed off upon an intelligent people. It is neither true in theory 

 nor in practice, and never has been. However beautiful it might be in 

 theory, that if for every import there was a corresponding export, in prac- 

 tice it never has been true, and the trade of the civilized nations of the 

 world for the last hundred years, if we examine it, proves it to be untrue. 

 An export of a product does not follow every import of a product. In 

 the dealings. between merchants, whether at home or abroad, whether be- 

 tween each other here in the United States or with those who live in Eng- 

 land or in any other country, the contracts or transactions in their dealings 

 with each other are based upon money or cash and not upon barter or 

 trade : that is, are to be paid for in money, and not in barter of one com- 

 modity for another commodity ; and this applies whether the contract is 

 for cotton, wheat, steel rails or woolen goods ; the one who buys agrees 

 to pay for it in cash or money, and a trade of one commodity for another 

 commodity is quite exceptional and out of the common or ordinary mode of 

 mercantile transactions. If Mr. Vanderbilt should want a thousand tons 

 of steel rails, and he should buy them of Naylor, Benson & Co., of Lon- 

 don, he would pay for them in cash or money and not in merchandise ; 

 and there would be no obligation, either expressed or implied, on the part 

 of the London house or anybody else, that because of the purchase of the 

 rails they should buy grain or other merchandise from Mr. Vanderbilt or 

 any other person in the United States. If there were millions ot bushels 

 of wheat piled up in every seaboard city of this country, they would not 

 take it. If you were to appeal to them they would tell you that their 



