_farceurs_, _faiseurs_, and _phraseurs_ is a misfortune of the first
magnitude--a pest worse than that of the locusts which lay waste the
land of Egypt, as here the substance of the people is devoured.
Conflagrations may, and do, occasionally diminish the number of
cotton-mills, and lighten the warehoused accumulation of cottons, or
other inert matter; but no lucky plague, pestilence, or cholera, comes
to thin the crowded phalanx, and rid this empire of some portion of the
interminable brood of mongers of all shapes and sizes. As Horace says--

"'Tis hard, but patience must endure
And bear the woes it cannot cure."

And now, leaving this discursive preliminary sketch, the length of which
was unpremeditated, of the leading influences which are fast hurrying to
social disorganization, it is time that once more we stand face to face
with the one disorganizing doctrine of _one-sided free trade_; with the
banner on which the _phraseurs_ and _farceurs_ have inscribed the
cabalistic devices, in flaming characters--"Leave the imports alone, the
exports will take care of themselves;" and, "A fixed duty is a fixed
injustice." One might be tempted to believe the first borrowed from the
armorial bearings of Lord Huntingtower's "bill" friends, whose motto is,
or should be--"Leave the fools alone, and the knaves will take care of
themselves;" the second is clearly no better than a petty-larceny
paraphrase of Newgate felony, in whose code of duties it stands decreed,
from all time, that "a fixed law is a fixed despotism."

The history of industry and commerce in every country, from the most
ancient down to modern times, gives the lie to these pertly pretending
truisms; for there is scarcely one branch of manufacture to be named
which does not owe its rise, progress, and perfection, to the protective
or financial, or both combined, control exercised over imports. If we
look at home only, where, we ask, would the woollen manufacture be now,
but for the early laws restrictive of the importation of foreign
woollens, nay more, restrictive of the export of British fleeces with
which the manufactories of Belgium were alimented? Where the cotton
trade, even with all Arkwright and Crompton's inventions of mule and
throstle frames, and the steam-engine wonders of Watt, but for the
importation tax of 87 per cent with which the cotton manufactures of
India were weighted and finally crushed? Where the British iron mines
and the iron tra