What was Egypt by nature? a sterile and moving sand. It has been well observed that its pestiferous river full of black mud, too filthy to slake the thirst or wash the person, was of little use, except to the rats, the insects, and the hideous reptiles.

Immense labors at length achieved a dominion over it. Canals, reservoirs, and multiform contrivances for irrigation, led it at length to every door-the minister of health, cleanliness, and fertility. Now there was, and ever since has been corn in Egypt. Ever since, in spite of bad government under the Pharaohs, the Persians, the Ptolemys, the Romans, the Caliphs, the Mamelukes, and the Pachas, it has been the land of plenty. What would it have been all this while, if from the slime of the Nile, three thousand years ago, had crawled forth not crocodiles, but political economists. 'Their cry would have been, "Don't attempt to force labor and capital into artificial channels, and at such an expense to bring into cultivation sterile lands, Buy at a cheaper rate from your neighbours, the Arabs, the Numidians, the Carthaginians, the Syrians, the Sicilians. As for your means of purchase, let them take care of themselves. Laissez faire, laissez passer."

Ancient Egypt's parallel and antitype, is modern Holland.

In Holland, below the level of the sea, and the surface of adjacent rivers and canals, have been created by human art, fat pastures teeming with flocks and

herds, rich artificial garden land, nourishing the industrious and thriving population of innumerable cities, towns and villages. The very coast is a fortification against the ocean, the ancient and natural monarch of the country. Here he is defied by leagues of artificial sea banks, there by miles of granite masonry. Rivers and canals are made to run many feet above the level of the country. Armies of indefatigable windmills are perpetually pumping and draining. Amsterdam and Rotterdam, populous, opulent, and splendid cities, rest but on piles driven into the mud. This concentration of native industry and art on the most unpromising of soils, resulted not only in agricultural but commercial prosperity. The seventeenth century saw Holland the greatest of maritime and commercial powers, under the most enlightened of governments. When religious bigotry disgraced and depopulated alike Catholic France and Protestant England, the native country of Erasmus and Grotius became the sanctuary of religious liberty. From Holland English Puritans set sail for North America, and founded a yet greater state, where the same maxims prevail, and as every where else, with the same results. From Holland came the power which sustained in England itself, not only civil liberty and the Reformation, but a highly artificial commercial policy, enduring for a hundred and fifty years, and leading to the grandest consequences. At this day even we ourselves and our children beyond the Atlantic, are debtors to the un

scientific and misdirected industry of the Seven United Provinces.

Compare this artificial legislation in ancient Egypt, and modern Holland, with the let alone system in Ireland-the most fertile country under heaven.

We, in the temperate zone have not the rank and luxuriant vegetation of the tropics. But our rigorous northern climate, nurtures and matures another product, in a perfection nowhere else seen.* MAN, intellectual, enterprising, indefatigable, high-spirited man. MAN, born to be the master and the tyrant, not the slave of surrounding circumstances, as the wretched and withering superstition of laissez faire would make him. In the days when the daring genius of Robert Stephenson can send a Railway train flying across the Menai Straits, are we to contemplate with indolent and disgraceful acquiescence not only the ruin of the Irish aristocracy, gentry and farmers, but the depopulation of the country, partly by the expatriation of the people, partly by such human shambles as Kilrush and Skibbereen?

Well may a living French writer and statesman of incontestable ability and experience,† exclaim of the let alone system (that system which would always and everywhere leave labor and capital to their own course,)

6

* See the late Speech of M. Thiers, Sur le regime commercial de la France." + Ibid.

that it is a system of indifference, inaction, impotence, and folly.

But in truth the natural course of commercial affairs uninfluenced by legislation is impossible. You must have a revenue: you must have customs and excise duties. Your fiscal regulations will destroy or create, will decisively harm or help a hundred sorts of industry. Will the least harm and the most good surely spring from the least possible care? It has been well observed that you might as well say, "Shoot without taking aim, and you will be sure to hit the mark."

CHAPTER IV.

Foreign commodities are always paid for by British commodities, THEREFORE the purchase of foreign commodities encourages British industry as much as the purchase of British commodities." *

LET us assume the premises to be true, yet the conclusion does not follow. Supposing every foreign commodity imported to be paid for in British commodities, it may still be for the interest of THE NATION to buy British commodities in preference to foreign. In other words, home trade is more advantageous than foreign trade.

On this text, hear the apostle of free-trade himself, Adam Smith.

'

"The capital which is employed in purchasing in one part of the country in order to sell in another "the produce of the industry of that country, generally "replaces by such operation two distinct capitals that "had both been employed in the agriculture or manu"facture of that country, and thereby enables them to “continue that employment. When both are the produce of domestic industry, it necessarily * See M'Culloch's Principles of Political Economy, p. 152.