430 FREE TRADE CONSONANT TO NATURE. 



Great Britain, Germany, and France, is raised from one- 

 third to one-half by the action of the tariff ; and this 

 additional price the whole Union pays, that the energies 

 of the manufacturers may be in reality repressed, and 

 interests created such as arose under protection among 

 us, and which it will be afterwards difficult to buy up. 



All study of natural history, and of physical geography, 

 shows that the Deity intended that one part of the world 

 should minister to the wants of another, and that they 

 should mutually interchange commodities and produc 

 tions. Perfect freedom of commercial intercourse is con 

 sistent with, and pointed to, by all the arrangements and 

 productions of soils, climates, and seasons. 



Were the world all new, open, and untrammelled, uni 

 versal free-trade, with our present knowledge, would be 

 naturally permitted among every people. It may be a 

 question whether or no such a system should be hastily 

 returned to by a country like ours, which has long acted 

 upon a wrong principle, and has created vast interests 

 which must inevitably suffer much by the change. But 

 there can be no question now as to the adoption of the 

 false principle in a country which has its course to begin. 

 It is contrary to the lights of the time to introduce pro 

 tection where no protective duties have previously 

 existed. It is true that the bounty given to the young 

 manufacturer will encourage him to build workshops 

 more rapidly, and in greater numbers, than if he had no 

 such encouragement. But the protection must at last be 

 removed, and then successive distresses, as with us, will 

 arise, which the earlier prosperity may but indifferently 

 repay. A slower rise of manufactures, in a country 

 where the demand for labour for agricultural purposes is 

 still great, would have based them on a safer, steadier, 

 and less anxious basis. 



There can be little doubt, I think, that, could England 

 and all her colonies have clung together, with a free trade 



