e foreigner by
encouraging the manufacture of clocks in different places, by helping to
bring to perfection our iron and steel, our tools and appliances, or by
bringing silk or dyer's woad into cultivation.

"In commerce, 'encouragement,' does not mean protection. A really wise
policy should aim at making a country independent of foreign supply,
but this should be effected without resorting to the pitiful shifts
of customs duties and prohibitions. Industries must work out their own
salvation, competition is the life of trade. A protected industry goes
to sleep, and monopoly, like the protective tariff, kills it outright.
The country upon which all others depend for their supplies will be the
land which will promulgate free trade, for it will be conscious of its
power to produce its manufactures at prices lower than those of any of
its competitors. France is in a better position to attain this end than
England, for France alone possesses an amount of territory sufficiently
extensive to maintain a supply of agricultural produce at prices that
will enable the worker to live on low wages; the Administration should
keep this end in view, for therein lies the whole modern question. I
have not devoted my life to this study, dear sir; I found my work by
accident, and late in the day. Such simple things as these are too
slight, moreover, to build into a system; there is nothing wonderful
about them, they do not lend themselves to theories; it is their
misfortune to be merely practically useful. And then work cannot be done
quickly. The man who means to succeed in these ways must daily look to
find within himself the stock of courage needed for the day, a courage
in reality of the rarest kind, though it does not seem hard to practise,
and meets with little recognition--the courage of the schoolmaster, who
must say the same things over and over again. We all honor the man who
has shed his blood on the battlefield, as you have done; but we ridicule
this other whose life-fire is slowly consumed in repeating the same
words to children of the same age. There is no attraction for any of us
in obscure well-doing. We know nothing of the civic virtue that led the
great men of ancient times to serve their country in the lowest rank
whenever they did not command. Our age is afflicted with a disease that
makes each of us seek to rise above his fellows, and there are more
saints than shrines among us.

"This is how it has come to pass. The m