om infant industries, and either they perish, or those who work in
them sink to the condition of the laboring classes of Europe. Nor do I
believe it is a good thing for a nation to have all its eggs in one
basket. I would not make this country exclusively agricultural because
we have boundless fields and can raise corn cheap, any more than I would
recommend a Minnesota farmer to raise nothing but wheat. Insects and
mildews and unexpected heats may blast a whole harvest, and the farmer
has nothing to fall back upon. He may make more money, for a time, by
raising wheat exclusively; but he impoverishes his farm. He should raise
cattle and sheep and grass and vegetables, as well as wheat or corn.
Then he is more independent and more intelligent, even as a nation is by
various industries, which call out all kinds of talent.

I know that this is a controverted point. Everything _is_ controverted
in political economy. There is scarcely a question which is settled in
its whole range of subjects; and I know that many intellectual and
enlightened men are in favor of what they call free-trade, especially
professors in colleges. But there is no such thing as free-trade,
strictly, in any nation, or in the history of nations. No nation
legislates for universal humanity on philanthropic principles; it
legislates for itself. There is no country where there are not high
duties on some things, not even England. No nation can be governed on
abstract principles and in disregard of its necessities. When it was for
the interest of England to remove duties on corn, in order that
manufactures might be stimulated, they took off duties on corn, because
the laboring-classes in the mills had to be fed. Agricultural interests
gave way, for a time, to manufacturing interests, because the wealth of
the country was based on them rather than on lands, and because
landlords did not anticipate that bread-stuffs brought from this country
would interfere with the value of their rents. But England, with all
her proud and selfish boasts about free-trade, may yet have to take a
retrograde course, like France and Prussia, or her landed interests may
be imperilled. The English aristocracy, who rule the country, cannot
afford to have the value of their lands reduced one-half, for those
lands are so heavily mortgaged that such a reduction of value would ruin
them; nor will they like to be forced to raise vegetables rather than
wheat, and turn themselves into marke