petition. It is action and reaction. It
operates between individuals of the same nation, and between different
nations. It resembles the meeting of the mountain torrent, grooving, by
its precipitous motion, its own channel, and ocean's tide. Unopposed,
it sweeps every thing before it; but, counterpoised, the waters become
calm, safe, and regular. It is like the segments of a circle or an arch:
taken separately, each is nothing; but in their combination they produce
efficiency, symmetry, and perfection. By the American system this vast
power has been excited in America, and brought into being to act in
cooperation or collision with European industry. Europe acts within
itself, and with America; and America acts within itself, and with
Europe. The consequence is the reduction of prices in both hemispheres.
Nor is it fair to argue from the reduction of prices in Europe to her
own presumed skill and labor exclusively. We affect her prices, and she
affects ours. This must always be the case, at least in reference to any
articles as to which there is not a total non-intercourse; and if our
industry, by diminishing the demand for her supplies, should produce a
diminution in the price of those supplies, it would be very unfair to
ascribe that reduction to her ingenuity, instead of placing it to the
credit of our own skill and excited industry.

Practical men understand very well this state of the case, whether
they do or do not comprehend the causes which produce it. I have in my
possession a letter from a respectable merchant, well known to me, in
which he says, after complaining of the operation of the tariff of 1828,
on the articles to which it applies, some of which he had imported, and
that his purchases having been made in England before the passage of
that tariff was known, it produced such an effect upon the English
market that the articles could not be resold without loss, and he adds:
"For it really appears that, when additional duties are laid upon
an article, it then becomes lower instead of higher!" This would not
probably happen where the supply of the foreign article did not exceed
the home demand, unless upon the supposition of the increased duty
having excited or stimulated the measure of the home production.

The great law of price is determined by supply and demand. What affects
either affects the price. If the supply is increased, the demand
remaining the same, the price declines; if the demand is increased,