BEET-ROOT SUGAR. 395 



objects for the industry of a country to be employed 

 upon, and there are objects which are not legitimate. 

 Attempts to force the labour of a country into chan- 

 nels for which it is unfitted by nature interfere with 

 the otherwise certain progress of mankind in civili- 

 zation, which is diffused over all the earth by peace- 

 ful intercourse. That it is the policy of a nation to be 

 independent of foreign supplies is false in principle 

 and ruinous in practice. All attempts to enforce this 

 delusive doctrine have no other tendency than to keep 

 the mass of consumers wretched, that a few mistaken 

 persons may thrive by a monopoly, who would even 

 thrive much more themselves if their capital were 

 employed in proper enterprises. Before a country 

 has roads and bridges, the inhabitants of one valley 

 separated from another valley by a mountain or a 

 river, must raise everything for themselves. The 

 roads are made and the bridges are built, and then 

 one raises corn and another cattle, for one valley is 

 fitted for tillage and the other for pasture. As civili- 

 zation advances, and roads are carried through a 

 country, and rivers are made navigable, the benefits 

 of exchange are not confined to a few districts, but 

 are diffused amongst many. Then, one raises corn, 

 and another manufactures cloth. Foreign commerce 

 then begins to give a new direction to the general 

 industry, and the cloth is manufactured for some dis- 

 tant nation, that will exchange commodities that none 

 of these districts can profitably raise for themselves. 

 Is there any limit to this beautiful principle of one 

 district and one country supplying by exchange the 

 wants of another district and another country ? There 

 is no limit, but what is raised by the prejudices, which, 

 in a ruder state of society, shut up a miserable popu- 

 lation amidst some apparently impassable barriers, to 

 be starved upon their own produce when they might 

 have had plenty by exchange. A writer in the 



