modity entering free, or at merely
nominal rates, at London or Liverpool, were to be taxed on arrival at
Leeds or Manchester, for purposes of local revenue or local protection?

We may afford to dismiss the third condition in the smallest space. Free
trade in Switzerland, such as it is, is not an affair of principle, of
conviction, therefore of choice, as ridiculously pretended, but a
necessity arising out of her geographical position. On all sides she is
surrounded _enclavee_, amidst states which hold the gates of ingress and
egress. Close the Rhine and the Seine against her, and she must
surrender commercially at discretion, as she politically does, to such
terms as may be dictated. A heavy _peage_ upon river or land transit,
ruins her manufactories, her industry, root and branch. She is too happy
only, therefore, to be tolerated with a passage to the sea, on the hard
terms of surrendering the just rights of her own industry to the free
invasion of foreign competing products; she makes, _ex necessitate_, the
sacrifice of a large portion, in order to save the remainder. Would you
have the commentary? Read it in the miserable fare, the low wages, the
toil unremitting and uncompensated, of the operative masses; in the
depressed rate of profits, the strict, painful, but indispensable
frugality of master manufacturers and capitalists, when perchance
capitalists may be found, of Switzerland surnamed Felix, over-borne by
foreign competition, as depicted in the Report of that romance writer,
Mr John Bowring himself, who, of all men, in his own particular case,
would be the last to advocate short commons, shabby salaries, or petty
profits. Switzerland, therefore, answers none of the conditions required
for the demonstration of the free trade theory upon the greatest profit,
or even upon the greatest happiness principle, the _verba ardentia_ of
anti-corn-law declaimers, and utilitarian poetasters, notwithstanding.
But if the case of the free and one-sided trade theory breaks down in
its one only deceptive personification, the proofs are strong and
abundant in behalf the cause of the legitimate principle of protection
to industry, or of the reciprocity principle well understood, which
involves essentially the principle of protection. Let us discursively
range over Europe, in further addition to the evidence, which, in
respect of Russia, has already been assigned; and, as with regard to
Spain, and Russia as well, we shall not hesi