SELL DEAR; BUY CHEAP. 91 



buy cheap of the United States, and not sell to us at all, but sell 

 dear to some other country, then both the United States and that 

 other country would set at naught the exhortations of the maxim, 

 the United States failing to obey the injunction to sell dear, and 

 the other country the injunction to buy cheap. Indeed, no coun- 

 try or countries can possibly buy cheap and sell dear, unless some 

 other country adopts into practice a course at war with the teach- 

 ings of the maxim ; for no country can buy cheap or sell dear 

 without finding some other country that will reverse the proce- 

 dure by selling cheap or buying dear that is to say, by doing the 

 exact contrary of what the Free Trade maxim enjoins upon it as a 

 duty. To be an operative maxim, not contradicting in practice 

 its own precepts and obligations, it must necessarily be restricted 

 to a few countries, or to all countries except one, the theory in 

 such case being that certain countries are endowed with special, 

 exclusive rights of trade, and there being a limitation upon the 

 privileged countries that they can not carry on commerce with one 

 another, else there would be an immediate violation of the rule ; 

 for, the moment any one of the number bought cheap, another 

 would have to sell cheap, which certainly would not be selling 

 dear ; and, on the other hand, whenever one of these countries 

 sold dear, some other of the countries would have to buy dear, 

 which assuredly would not be buying cheap, according to the spe- 

 cific exhortation of the maxim. Now, as it is impossible for all 

 countries together and at once to be buying in the cheapest mar- 

 ket and selling in the dearest, there is no way to make the rule 

 operative at all, unless it shall be confined to a certain number of 

 countries excluded from commercial exchange with one another, 

 yet clothed with exceptional privileges of trade with some other 

 country or countries, A, B, and C separate and distinct coun- 

 tries might be able to buy cheap of and sell dear to D, E, F, G, 

 and H, but these eight countries could not possibly do so among 

 themselves indiscriminately. Then, as the Free Trade maxim can 

 not be made of universal application, will somebody our corres- 

 pondent, for instance be so good as to indicate what countries 

 are to be privileged to buy cheap and sell dear, and what countries 

 shall we say the United States, for one ? are submissively to sell 

 cheap and buy dear j and on what principle of morality he justi- 



