distributed nearly the whole army among the seaport
cities, and whenever a Stronagu trading proa attempted to land, the
soldiery, assisted by the populace, rushed down to the beach, and with a
terrible din of gongs and an insupportable discharge of stink-pots--the
only offensive weapon known to Tortirran warfare--drove the laden vessels
to sea, or if they persisted in anchoring destroyed them and smothered
their crews in mud. The Tortirrans themselves not being a sea-going
people, all communication between them and the rest of their little world
soon ceased. But with it ceased the prosperity of Tortirra. Deprived of a
market for their surplus products and compelled to forego the comforts and
luxuries which they had obtained from abroad, the people began to murmur
at the effect of their own folly. A reaction set in, a powerful opposition
to Pragam and his policy was organized, and he was driven from power.

But the noxious tree that Pragam had planted in the fair garden of his
country's prosperity had struck root too deeply to be altogether
eradicated. It threw up shoots everywhere, and no sooner was one cut down
than from roots underrunning the whole domain of political thought others
sprang up with a vigorous and baleful growth. While the dictum that trade
is piracy no longer commands universal acceptance, a majority of the
populace still hold a modified form of it, and that "importation is theft"
is to-day a cardinal political "principle" of a vast body of Tortirra's
people. The chief expounders and protagonists of this doctrine are all
directly or indirectly engaged in making or growing such articles as were
formerly got by exchange with the Stronagu traders. The articles are
generally inferior in quality, but consumers, not having the benefit of
foreign competition, are compelled to pay extortionate prices for them,
thus maintaining the unscrupulous producers in needless industries and a
pernicious existence. But these active and intelligent rogues are too
powerful to be driven out. They persuade their followers, among whom are
many ignorant consumers, that this vestigial remnant of the old Pragam
policy is all that keeps the nation from being desolated by small-pox and
an epidemic of broken legs. It is impossible within these limits to give a
full history of the strange delusion whose origin I have related. It has
undergone many modifications and changes, as it is the nature of error to
do, but the present situation