244 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



less degree to ours. American political economists 

 find the explanation of this in the effects of the war 

 between the North and the South. Unfortunately it did 

 so happen that the effects of the protective tariff, which 

 alone were permanently injurious, coincided, in point of 

 time, with the serious but transient effects of the war. 

 It would have been easy for the clear vision of a 

 soundly reasoning political economist to have dis- 

 tinguished between the two classes of effects ; j ust as a 

 skilful doctor can distinguish between the steady mis- 

 chief wrought by some error of regimen and the tran- 

 sitory, though for a time more striking, mischief 

 produced by an access of fever or by some bodily injury. 

 But America possessed among her statesmen and 

 politicians none who could thus recognise the true 

 cause of the loss she was, and is, yearly undergoing. 

 The history of European nations should have sufficed, 

 however, to show that even in Europe, where the 

 effects of war have always been more lasting by far 

 than in America, the commerce of a great nation, 

 however seriously it may suffer during war, recovers 

 quickly when peace has been restored, a fact which 

 should thus have convinced America that the mischief 

 from which her commerce suffers is more deeply seated 

 than any injury which the War of 1861-65 could have 

 produced. One other error, which for many years mis- 

 led us on this side of the Atlantic, America might also 

 learn to avoid, would she but consider the lesson which 

 we have learned at very heavy cost. I refer to the 

 fond delusion that mischief to one country means gain 



