y of this distinction, which causes them so strenuously
to contend for the removal of all restrictions. They hope, by so doing, to
effect a great extension of their sales in foreign countries, without, as
they pretend, creating any diminution in their own. But the views which
have now been given show that this is a vain conceit, and demonstrate how
it has happened, that the more strenuously England contends for the
principles of free trade, and the more energetically that she carries them
into practice, the more decided is the resistance which she meets on
foreign states in the attempt, and the more rigorously do they act on the
principles of protection. It is because they are striving to become
manufacturing and commercial communities that they do this--it is a clear
sense of the ruin which awaits them, if deluged with British goods, which
makes them so strenuous in their system of exclusion. The more that we
open our trade, the more will they close theirs. They think, and not
without reason, that we advocate unrestricted commercial intercourse only
because it would be profitable to us, and deprecate our old system of
exclusion only because it has now been turned against ourselves. "Now,
then," say they, "is the time, when England is suffering under the system
of exclusion, which we have at length had sense enough to borrow from her,
to draw closer the bonds of that system, and complete the glorious work of
our own elevation on her ruins. Our policy is clearly chalked out by hers;
we have only to do what she deprecates, and we are sure to be right." It
is evident that these views will be permanently entertained by them,
because they are founded on the strongest of all instincts that of
self-preservation. When we cease to be a great manufacturing nation, when
we are no longer formidable rivals, they will open their harbours; but not
till then. In striving to introduce a system of free trade, therefore, we
gratuitously inflict a severe wound on our domestic industry, without any
chance even of a compensation in that which is destined for the foreign
markets. We let in their goods into our harbours, but we do not obtain
admission, nor will we ever obtain admission, for ours into theirs. The
reciprocity is, and ever must be, all on one side.

It is by mistaking the dominant influence among the continental states,
that so large a portion of the community are deceived on this subject.
They say, if we take their grain and cattl