ions should inundate us with useful
produce of every description, and ask nothing in return; that our
importations should be _infinite_, and our exportations _nothing_.
Imagine all this, and still I defy you to prove that we will be the
poorer in consequence.

CHAPTER VII.

A PETITION.

Petition from the Manufacturers of Candles, Wax-Lights, Lamps,
Chandeliers, Reflectors, Snuffers, Extinguishers; and from the
Producers of Tallow, Oil, Resin, Petroleum, Kerosene, Alcohol, and
generally of every thing used for lights.

"_To the Honorable the Senators and Representatives of the United
States in Congress assembled._

"GENTLEMEN:--You are in the right way: you reject abstract
theories; abundance, cheapness, concerns you little. You are entirely
occupied with the interest of the producer, whom you are anxious to
free from foreign competition. In a word, you wish to secure the
_national market_ to _national labor_.

"We come now to offer you an admirable opportunity for the application
of your--what shall we say? your theory? no, nothing is more
deceiving than theory--your doctrine? your system? your principle? But
you do not like doctrines; you hold systems in horror; and, as for
principles, you declare that there are no such things in political
economy. We will say, then, your practice; your practice without
theory, and without principle.

"We are subjected to the intolerable competition of a FOREIGN RIVAL,
who enjoys, it would seem, such superior facilities for the production
of light, that he is enabled to _inundate_ our _national market_ at so
exceedingly reduced a price, that, the moment he makes his appearance,
he draws off all custom from us; and thus an important branch of
American industry, with all its innumerable ramifications, is suddenly
reduced to a state of complete stagnation. This rival, who is no other
than the sun, carries on so bitter a war against us, that we have
every reason to believe that he has been excited to this course by our
perfidious cousins, the Britishers. (Good diplomacy this, for the
present time!) In this belief we are confirmed by the fact that in all
his transactions with their befogged island, he is much more moderate
and careful than with us.

"Our petition is, that it would please your Honorable Body to pass a
law whereby shall be directed the shutting up of all windows, dormers,
sky-lights, shutters, curtains--in a word, all openings, holes,
chinks, and fissures