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It has afforded a delusive appearance of prosperity, and enabled us to pay up our balances with England, which, since the tariff of 1846, have been almost always against us. But for this supply of gold we should have been-if we may judge from the history of former years-under that tariff, bankrupt years ago, and we should then have applied the remedy, and the only one, of protecting our own manufactures, as was done in 1842. The result would have been, that we should, to-day, have been far better off than we now are, or can be, should the receipt of gold be doubled in quantity. We should be creating real wealth, instead of relying on what is unreal and fictitious. Instead of playing into the hands of England, we should have had the game in our own hands. Far better for us as a nation would it have been, if the gold fields of California had been sunk in the ocean, deeper than ever plummet sounded, rather than they should thus have helped to avert a catastrophe which would otherwise have happened long ago, and left us in a condition to see our mistake in season, and to rectify it, before we had lost more millions than California, under the present system, can ever restore to us, should all her sands be converted into the finest gold.

18*

FREE TRADE.

1855.

FREE TRADE produces nothing; it makes nothing; it creates no wealth, not a particle of it; it develops no resources. It simply exchanges the wealth of one nation for the wealth of another. That is all. Most useful to be sure, it is, but in the use that is made of it by our modern politicians, a greater fallacy was never broached. If the two nations were on an equal footing, free trade might answer for both parties, though it would add no wealth to either. If the two parties are not on the same footing, as is the case with England and ourselves, then it is obvious that the principal share of the advantage belongs to her.

2

Let us take an example: I am a farmer, and raise wool, and having concluded to send three thousand miles to have it made up into cloth, I send, say two pounds of it, to be made into a yard of broadcloth. The broadcloth, when done, having employed some dozen operatives in the different processes of its manufacture, each of which pays a profit, is worth say

three dollars and fifty cents. The two pounds of wool are worth say one dollar. I have then to pay two dollars and fifty cents more for the manufacture. I find that I have only four pounds of wool left, so I send that and fifty cents in cash, which is all the spare change I can raise, and if I find it not convenient to raise the money, give my note for it.

The four pounds of wool are taken by the manufacturer and worked up into two yards more of cloth, which he sells for seven dollars; making in all eleven dollars as the result of my fifty cents cash and six pounds of wool, for which I get three dollars, taking pay in broadcloth. I have the yard of cloth, however, and I feel greatly pleased with it, as was the vicar's son Moses with the gross of spectacles with shagreen cases. This free trade I think is a grand thing. My neighbor's broadcloth mill may now go down, and welcome, for all I care, since I can do better than to look to him for what I require to clothe

me.

As time rolls on, however, I find that I am each year less able to furnish the wool and the money, because, by withdrawing my support from my neighbor's mill, I have cut off my own supplies, by destroying the only market I had for all the rest of my produce. The foreign manufacturer, I find, will take my wool, but not my potatoes or my turnips, my butter or my beef, nor my squashes, or pumpkins,

or apples, or hay, my poultry or my pork, all of which I could sell to my neighbor when his broadcloth mill was running, while the shoes that I made up in the winter were needed by the workmen, about a hundred of whom are now unemployed, and of course cannot buy of me, nor of any one else. I find that I have made but a bad bargain of it, and that it would have been far better for me to have paid my neighbor a little more for his cloth for a short time, thus enabling him to get under weigh, after which he could give me a better and cheaper article than I have purchased abroad, pay me a good price for my wool, and take his pay for the labor he bestows upon it in my way, so that I could sell my produce and keep my fifty cents in my own pocket, which would help me to buy a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner.

My neighbor, 'Squire H., who has set all our folks by the ears upon the subject of free trade, told me I should buy where I can buy cheapest; but I find that what seemed cheapest at first turns out to be dearest in the end, and that I am very much in the condition of the Irishman, who said he could buy potatoes in his own country for ten cents a bushel, the only difficulty being that he could not get the money to buy them with.

This is free trade, and it would seem to require no argument to show which party is getting the benefit of it. This is the new theory that is recommended as

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