"

See also Professor Perry's pamphlet, _Recent Phases of Thought in
Political Economy_, read before the American Social Science Association,
October, 1868, in which, it appears to me, that Bastiat's theory of
Rent, in announcing which he was anticipated by Mr. Carey, is too highly
praised.]

The _Sophismes Economiques_, which fill the larger portion of this
volume, were not expected by their author to outlast the fallacies which
they sought to overthrow. But these fallacies have lived longer and have
spread over more of the earth's surface than any one _a priori_ could
have believed possible. It is sometimes useful, in opposing doctrines
which people have been taught to believe are peculiar to their own
country and time, to show that the same doctrines have been maintained
in other countries and times, and have been exploded in other languages.
By what misuse of words the doctrine of Protection came to be
denominated the "American System," I could never understand. It
prevailed in England nearly two hundred years before our separation from
the mother country. Adam Smith directed the first formidable attack
against it in the very year that our independence was declared. It held
its ground in England until it had starved and ruined almost every
branch of industry--agriculture, manufactures, and commerce alike.[4] It
was not wholly overthrown until 1846, the same year that witnessed its
discomfiture in the United States, as already shown. It still exists in
a subdued and declining way in France, despite the powerful and
brilliant attacks of Say, Bastiat, and Chevalier, but its end cannot be
far distant in that country. The Cobden-Chevalier treaty with England
has been attended by consequences so totally at variance with the
theories and prophecies of the protectionists that it must soon succumb.

[Footnote 4: It is so often affirmed by protectionists that the
superiority of Great Britain in manufactures was attained by means of
protection, that it is worth while to dispel that illusion. The facts
are precisely the reverse. Protection had brought Great Britain in the
year 1842 to the last stages of penury and decay, and it wanted but a
year or two more of the same regimen to have precipitated the country
into a bloody revolution. I quote a paragraph from Miss Martineau's
"History of England from 1816 to 1854," Book VI, Chapter 5:

"Serious as was the task of the Minister (Sir R. Peel) in every view,
the most imme