abrics for
themselves. Whichever effect takes place, the object of nature in the
equalization of industry, the limitation of aged communities, and the
dispersion of mankind, is gained, in the first, by the ruin of the old
empire from the decay of its agricultural resources; in the second, by the
check given to its manufacturing prowess, and the transference of
mercantile industry to its younger rivals.

Generally the interests and necessities of the young states introduce a
prohibitory system to exclude the manufactures of the old one; and it is
this necessity which England is now experiencing, and vainly endeavours to
obviate, by introducing a system of free trade. But in one memorable
instance, and one only, the preponderance of a particular power rendered
this impossible, and illustrated on a great scale, and over the whole
civilized world, for a course of centuries, the effects of a perfect
freedom of trade. The Roman empire, spreading as it did round the shores
of the Mediterranean, afforded the utmost facilities for a great internal
traffic; while the equal policy of the emperors, and indeed the necessity
of their situation, introduced a perfect freedom in the interchange of
commodities between every part of their vast dominions. And what was the
result? Why, that the agriculture of Italy was destroyed--that 300,000
acres in the champaign of Naples alone reverted to a state of nature, and
were tenanted only by wild-boars and buffaloes, before a single barbarian
had crossed the Alps--that the Grecian cities were entirely maintained by
grain from the plains of Podolia--and the mistress of the world, according
to the plaintive expression of the Roman annalist, depended for her
subsistence on the floods of the Nile.[20] Not the corruption of manners,
not the tyranny of the Caesars, occasioned the ruin of the empire, for
they affected only a limited class of the people; but the practical
working of free trade, joined to domestic slavery, which destroyed the
agricultural population of the heart of the empire, and left only
effeminate urban multitudes to contend with the hardy barbarians of the
north.

[20] Tacitus, Vol. xiv. p. 21; Michelet's _Hist. de France,_
Vol. i. p. 217.

The advocates of free trade are not insensible to the superior advantages
of the rising over the old state in agriculture, and of the latter over
the former in manufactures. On the contrary, it is a secret but clear
sense of the realit