152 
Political Econdmy, 
time ; — when you have finished, there remains no result of your 
labour that could be measured, or weighed. But, if the day fol* 
lowing, and ever after, the industry of your hearer is equal to two- 
fold the wonted task, who will say that your labour has been unpro- 
ductive ? you have doubled the usefulness of his existence. 
What remains of the activity of congress, after they have 
risen ? yet, a few sentences, passed into a law, and handed 
over to the chief magistrate, for execution, will animate, or para- 
lyze the industry of unnumbered individuals, encourage honest 
pursuits, by security of reward, or drive whole classes at once as 
we see daily, by the magnitude of illicit gains, or the necessity of 
finding the means of subsistence ; into the paths of smuggling, 
imposition, and fraud. 
Say, and after him the distinguished American commentator of 
the great MoNTEsquiEu,* call merchants manufacturers of 
peace. The idea is somewhat quaint. It seems difficult, for us 
people of common sense, to conceive how space, unbounded, could 
be something fabricated, or even the occupancy of any defined sec- 
tion of it — peace- — a production !— According to the same com- 
menting luminary, the soil is only a tool in the hands of the hus- 
bandman, who manufactures wheat. By parity of reasoning, cows 
and bulls are the instruments of the breeder ; and our graziers 
manufacture beef, by means of a judicious application of oxen to 
pasture !f 
But— leaving such sublime conceits to those who, strangely 
enough, imagine that they soar with Montesquieu in kindred re- 
gions, or even presume to look down upon him with a sneer^ — I 
believe there is a species of commodity the importance of which 
has long been generally felt, and at which a plain intellect will 
not revolt, when it is brought into notice. I mean convenience. 
^ A commentary. 
The shades of Montlcello are particularly familiar to the author, who, with 
a candour, tout a fait unique ! avows himself, in the preface, to be a French 
man. Dr. B. 
The commentary on ^lontesquleu, was writters in French, by a French 
man. It is too theoretical and too democratic for me in some parts ; but 
I consider it as a work of considerable merit, and well worth perusing. T. C 
j- 1 see nothing ridiculous in this view of the subject. It seems to me as 
substantially true, that a grazier manufactures beef, by applying the proper 
kind of food to his oxen, as that a cabinet-maker manufactures a chest of 
drawers, by applying the proper instruments to his log of mahogany. We 
might as well indeed keep to common language, which distinguishes them, 
hut there is not much real distinction in the T, C,.. 
