CHAP. XXXVIII.] WASHINGTON FREE TRADE. 243 



does the colored race stand in need of some such make- weights to 

 neutralize the prejudices which retard their natural progress. 

 We were told of an ineffectual attempt, recently made by a lady 

 here, to obtain leave to bury a favorite free negro woman in St. 

 James s graveyard, although she had died a member of the Epis 

 copal church ; nor are any colored people allowed to be buried at 

 the Laurel Hill Cemetery. That burial-ground commands a 

 beautiful view up and down the Schuylkill, and the ground there 

 is laid out with much taste, being covered with evergreens and 

 trees, and having many of the graves adorned, at this season, 

 with violets and lilies of the valley. 



April 27. Leaving my wife with some friends at Philadel 

 phia, I set out on a geological tour to Richmond, Virginia, to Re 

 sume my examination of the Oolitic coal-field, left half-finished in 

 December last. At Washington I found they were holding a 

 national fair, or grand exhibition of manufactured articles, intend 

 ed to convince Congress of the advantage of a high tariff. The 

 protectionists maintain that every article which, for seven years, 

 has been shielded from foreign competition, has been reduced in 

 price to the consumer below the foreign cost at the time when 

 the duty was imposed. The free-traders, on the other hand, 

 argue, that their antagonists keep out of sight the fact that in 

 those same seven years the price of the foreign articles might, 

 and probably would, have fallen as much. One party points to 

 the former policy of Great Britain toward her American colonies ; 

 how she interdicted them from manufacturing for themselves, and 

 even from selling the productions of their own soil and industry 

 to any but the mother country ; how she grew rich by monop 

 oly and restrictions, nursing her infant agriculture, commerce, and 

 factories, by prohibitive duties ; and they ask whether, if the 

 English cabinet really believed in the theory of free-trade, they 

 would not long ere this have repealed the navigation laws ? The 

 advocates of the opposite policy appeal to the recent law for ad 

 mitting American corn duty-free into England, as demonstrating 

 the sincerity of the British government. But in this controversy 

 it happens, as usual, that class-interests are espoused with all the 

 personal zeal and energy with which men pursue a private object, 



