and farms, as they are in France. Farmers must
raise fruit and vegetables instead of wheat.

When Hamilton proposed protection for our infant manufactures, they
never could have grown unless they had been assisted; we should have
been utterly dependent on Europe. That is just what Europe would have
liked. But he did not legislate for Europe, but for America. He
considered its necessities, not abstract theories, nor even the
interests of other nations. How hypocritical the cant in England about
free-trade! There never was free-trade in that country, except in
reference to some things it must have, and some things it could
monopolize. Why did Parliament retain the duty on tobacco and wines and
other things? Because England must have a revenue. Hamilton did the
same. He would raise a revenue, just as Great Britain raises a revenue
to-day, in spite of free-trade, by taxing certain imports. And if the
manufactures of England to-day should be in danger of being swamped by
foreign successful competition, the Government would change its policy,
and protect the manufactures. Better protect them than allow them to
perish, even at the expense of national pride.

But the manufactures of this country at the close of the Revolutionary
War were too insignificant to expect much immediate advantage from
protection. It was Hamilton's policy chiefly to raise a revenue, and to
raise it by duties on imports, as the simplest and easiest and surest
way, when people were poor and money was scarce. Had he lived in these
days, he might have modified his views, and raised revenue in other
ways. But he labored for his time and circumstances. He took into
consideration the best way to raise a revenue for his day; for this he
must have, somehow or other, to secure confidence and credit. He was
most eminently practical. He hated visionary ideas and abstract
theories; he had no faith in them at all. You can push any theory, any
abstract truth even, into absurdity, as the theologians of the Middle
Ages carried out their doctrines to their logical sequence. You cannot
settle the complicated relations of governments by deductions. At best
you can only approximate to the truth by induction, by a due
consideration of conflicting questions and issues and interests.

The next important measure of Hamilton was the recommendation of a
National Bank, in order to facilitate the collection of the revenue.
Here he encountered great opposition. Many politicians