treasury, by 3,500,0007., than 1,150 produce under the existing state of things. 1. Sugar 2. Tea 3. Tobacco 5. Spirits 7. Corn 8. Coffee 9. Provisions 10. Wool It would be some consolation if the consequences of bad legislation were confined to the nation which originated it; but the evil example has been contagious, and, fortified by British authority, one monopoly after another has established itself in other countries. Reprisals under the name of self-defence have established in the tariffs of foreign nations the same hostile and repulsive principles which we had introduced into our own. The battles of custom-houses have succeeded to the battles of swords, and, as has been truly said, with consequences equally pernicious to the general weal-nay, perhaps even more pernicious; for when the military fray is over, the passions which it called into action subside; but in the war of tariffs there is no cessation of hostilities -the contest is ever-during-the malevolence which is awakened finds no slumber. Words would fail us were we to attempt to record the abundant follies which have been introduced into the commercial legislation of the principal trading communities of Christendom-the folly of prohibiting men from buying cheap what they consume, and selling dear what they produce-the folly of closing up and curtailing the sources of wealth, narrowing the field of labour and of enterprise, taxing the many for the special benefit of the few, and sacrificing the general weal to partial and sinister interests. But as it is not easy to exhaust the list of such erroneous enactments, or to exhibit them all in their multiform absurdity, we shall content ourselves by citing some instances of ignorance of the great principle of political economy which has been sanctioned by the legislature, or adopted by the governments of states calling themselves civilized and instructed. And first the commercial legislation of France, a country possessing aptitudes of the very highest order-a various and feracious soil-ports opening upon the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas-fine navigable rivers-abundant capital-a population distinguished for intelligence and imaginativeness-brave, and enterprizing, and ambitious-abounding in the most valuable raw materials for manufactures-her agricultural products in demand through the civilized world-her political position proud and influential. With such elements, the field of her prosperity would seem capable of boundless extension; but her system of fiscal and commercial policy has confined the development of her great resources to the narrowest sphere. A wrong direction having been given to legislation, one false step has necessitated another-protection has engendered protection-prohibition has led to prohibition-and the foolish theory that it is possible to sell without buying, to export the produce of your own labour without importing the produce of the labour of others, has been transferred in practice to almost every page of the tariffs of France. "Independence of foreigners," "protection to native industry," are, in varied phraseology, the two fallacies which, having passed into popular language, have become the watchwords and the weapons by which the rights and interests of the consuming many have been invaded and overthrown by the monopolizing few. It is lamentable, in a country where Jean Baptiste Say* has so completely laid bare the shallow sophistry of the anti-free traders, that this sophistry should be the groundwork of the whole commercial legislation of France; for in France every consideration is made subordinate to the purpose of raising prices for the home producer by the exclusion of foreign competition. The customhouse revenues of France do not render per head upon the whole population one seventh of what is raised in England; the net receipts of the custom of Great Britain, with a population one third less than that of France, exceed by nearly five hundred per cent. the net income of the French Douanes, while the export trade of Great Britain, according to the official valuation of the two countries, exceeds that of France in the proportion of three and a half to one. The numerous vicious progeny which are born from a vicious principle may be traced in the tariffs of France. High duties and prohibitions generally begin with manufactured articles, for in this respect the protection fallacy is found in its least trans * It is to be hoped that the writings of this Jean Baptiste (Say) may in time undo the mischievous legislation of another Jean Baptiste (Colbert), to whom the prohibitory system of France owes its origin. parent state-the prohibition of the imported manufacture seems at once to give a direct premium and encouragement to the native artisan, and he joins with the manufacturer in the demand for that prohibition of which he is to share the benefits. A French working cutler, for instance, is well content to combine with his master for the exclusion of foreign cutlery from France. It is excluded; but next comes the smelter of French steel, who insists on his title to the greater profit which the monopoly of the French market has given to the cutler. What right has the French cutler to the cheap steel of foreign countries, when he has obtained monopoly prices for his knives and razors? Clearly none, so foreign steel is subjected to an enormous duty. Then comes the iron master, with a stronger case and a larger interest; for the home-production of iron-that most important of metalsis of far more urgency than that of steel; and the iron master, too, obtains the exclusion of the rival foreign iron. Next appears the owner of forests and the worker of coal-mines, each urging the same pleas, and each obtaining the same favours. At every step new capital is embarked, mightier interests are created, and at every step, too, new exactions are levied upon the consumer, whose means of defence are diminished by the gradual consolidation of the monopoly, till at last miner and forester, ironfounder, steel maker, and cutler, are bound and banded together in one great confederacy, each assisting the other to prey upon the common prosperity of the community. It is true that the sound theories of political economy were little understood whep, nearly one hundred and eighty years ago, Colbert introduced into the tariff of France the system of socalled protection by levying high duties on foreign articles. The science of creating, and colleeting, and diffusing wealth had been little studied either by statesmen or philosophers; its most elementary axioms were unrecognised; but the ignorance of ancient times cannot be pleaded as a justification for modern misrule, and lamentable it is to reflect that the diffusion of economical knowledge through the world has been accompanied rather by the extension of bad than of good principles in French commercial legislation. Strange and sad it is, that the profound and liberal views of a Turgot should have been overpowered and superseded by a combination of sinister interests, and that too in a country boasting of the general recognition of the doctrines of equality, and of the overthrow of ecclesiastical and aristocratical monopolies. There was one period, indeed, when sounder views seemed likely to prevail. The treaty of 1786 was favourable in the |