and commerce of the country benefited. It is shown, elsewhere, how domestic manufactures absorb the products of agriculture, and how a home market for agricultural produce is better than a foreign market. In the first place, the domestic art absorbs of the products of agriculture, all that is necessary for the subsistence of the artisans, which would otherwise be supplied by the artisans themselves. In the next place, agriculture furnishes the raw materials in many cases, as in the manufacture of woollens, and in the making and manufactures of iron. This is all saved to the American agriculturist, by home manufacture, and the benefit is immense. In the third place, all the varieties of business that are set agoing at home, by this increase of home manufactures, take off from the number of persons devoted to agriculture, that is, their numbers relative to other pursuits, make agriculture more profitable for the remainder, increase the demand for agricultural products in a variety of ways, and in that mode sustain and raise prices. In the fourth place, it makes a great difference in the profits of the agriculturist, when the manufacturer comes to him at his own door, and when he has to go after the manufacturer in foreign parts. In the former case, the agriculturist is sure of his customer; in the latter, not; and in the former, he is saved the costs of transportation both ways, which the latter would impose upon him. This close contiguity of the agriculturist and manufacturer, helps both, sustains both, and both contribute to the wealth of the community, which, in turn, contributes to their wealth. The many values, added by manufacture to the raw materials, sometimes six, sometimes ten, running up to hundreds, and even thousands, which would otherwise be created and realized abroad, are created and realized at home, and add so much to the stock of private and public wealth.

Professor Twiss well observes: "It is of the highest importance to the farmer, that the arts should prosper, as it is reciprocally to the artisan, that agriculture should flourish. A town situated in a rich country finds a large body of purchasers among the neighboring agriculturists, precisely as farmers, who dwell near a flourishing town, find an excellent market for their produce among the artisans... If the agriculture of a country flourishes, it is a reason why its manufactures and commerce should flourish, just as the prosperity of its manufactures and commerce must exercise a beneficial influence upon its agriculture." This, it must be allowed, is most excellent reasoning, except, perhaps, it does not

state with sufficient clearness and force the reciprocal dependence of agriculture and the arts. Instead of saying, "If the agriculture of a country flourishes," &c., he should have said, it flourishes because the arts do, and the prosperity of the arts is identified with that of agriculture. Each is cause of the good condition of the other. Commerce, including home and foreign trade, is the great public agent, which agriculture and manufactures employ to distribute their products at home and abroad; and it has elsewhere been shown in this work, demonstrated, we may say, by authentic statistical evidence, that commerce- home and foreign trade -always flourishes most under a protective system. Consequently it is proved, by this result in the matter of commerce, as well as by other modes of reasoning, that agriculture and manufactures prosper most under such a system. Else, how could commerce have more to do, as the agent of these two great interests?

There has not, therefore, been a mistake, as the doctrines of Free Trade suppose, in the importance which, from the beginning of our history as a nation, has been attached to these three cardinal interests of the country, agriculture, manufactures, and commerce; much less has there been a mistake in the importance felt of protecting them equally and alike, and protecting them well, as the helps and handmaids of each other, and they together, as the instrument of the wealth and power of the whole people.

The respect which has been so long rendered to Adam Smith, in other words, his authority, seems never to have admitted of a question, that there must be something in that which he has made so much of, viz., the assumed antagonistical positions of commerce and agriculture; and accordingly almost every writer on public economy, since Adam Smith, has taken up the debate about “the mercantile and agricultural systems." In the "mercantile" is included the manufacturing system. The vice of the first of these, according to Adam Smith, is its hostility to freedom of commerce, alias, to Free Trade; and that of the second, hostility to all foreign trade. Adam Smith, perhaps, has done some good service, in neutralizing extreme opinions on either side, by the interposition and elucidation of some abstract propositions, not less excellent than true, as cited above; though the main object of his extended discussion of "the mercantile system," as he calls it, seems to have been to advocate Free Trade, by setting up a man of straw, and then knocking him into pieces. There is really and naturally no hostility, nor by any possibility can there be hostility, between agricul

ture and trade-trade being supposed to include manufactures, as in this case it does. If agriculture be supposed to comprehend all those pursuits which avail themselves of nature as a fundamental agent in the production of commodities required for the sustenance and convenience of the human family, manufactures and commerce may properly be denominated, as in fact they are, its agents or servants, to modify and distribute its products-modification, when required, being the function of manufactures, and distribution that of trade. They can not possibly be anything more; and that is precisely the position which they occupy.

In this relation, it can not but be seen that the hypothesis of any natural or artificial hostility between the agricultural and mercantile interests-the mercantile including the manufacturing-is stamped with absurdity. It will be admitted that there is no naturul hostility, and that there are the strongest motives for the contrary state of feeling. How, then, can there be an artificial or factitious hostility? That, too, would be a moral impossibility. They are mutually dependent on each other. Agriculture being the basis of the manufacturing and commercial systems, the more there is done in the first, so much more the last two, as agents of the first, will have to do; and vice versa, the more activity there is in the manufacturing and commercial systems, so much greater will be the demand on the activity of agriculture, which is here used in so comprehensive a sense as to be the chief producer of the materials on which these two agents rely for employment. These agents are the mere ministers of agriculture in everything they do. Without them, agriculture would have nothing to do, except to supply the mouths of the wigwam. The first transaction of barter, in skins or anything else, is the beginning of trade; the first apron, or the first moccasin (sandal it would be in the east), that is made, is the beginning of manufactures; and the first ornament that is attached to or interwoven in either, is an improvement in manufactures. These operations at once make a demand on the producers of the raw materials, and on that sustenance of the fabricators which come from the earth, the forests, and the waters; and every stage of progress in the manufacturing arts, and in that commerce which they give birth to, from these first and simple developments of human ingenuity, up to the production of the greatest luxuries, elegances, and refinements of the highest degrees of civilization, makes an additional demand on the products of agriculture, considered, as it is here, not only as comprehending

all that the earth, but all that nature yields, to the industry and labor of man. There is no point of view, and no possible practical operation of things, in which manufactures and commerce do not stand forth as the ministering agents of this other great and comprehensive interest-and only as ministers, so far as their influence is reflective. It is impossible they should not, in all their operations, benefit agriculture; and the greater and more active those operations are, so much greater the benefit.

We are not unaware that certain artificial modifications of trade, in the shape of privilege, under legal provisions, may be urged as the ground of this hypothesis of Smith and others, and that it may, perhaps, be said and insisted that it is valid after all. The point here aimed at is abundantly answered in other parts of this work. Our only purpose here is to show that there was and is no just cause for the much ado that has been made by economists about the "mercantile and agricultural systems;" that there is no such distinction for any practical purposes; and that all that has been said and written about it, is a waste of argument, making confusion worse confounded. The artificial modifications of trade, alluded to, do not belong to this particular question, but are embraced in others, and are by us considered in those connexions. We maintain, that, for practical purposes, no theory of "a mercantile system," such as we are now considering, can be set up as hostile to an "agricultural system;" nor any theory of the latter as hostile to the former. This huge invention—for it is vastly huge-has been made thus vast, apparently, to make an impression, that there was really something in it; or, peradventure, it may be accounted for, by the case of a man who has had the misfortune to plunge into a slough, and is seen floundering about a long time before he can get out again.

Not only is there no foundation for this theory of a “mercantile system," resting on the basis, and having the tendency, alleged by Adam Smith and others, but there is, perhaps, some reason, especially in the United States, for alleging the existence of a "mercantile system," having interests directly opposite to those which Smith and his followers have made so prominent, viz., one opposed to a protective system. It is, perhaps, rather a principle, than a system a principle which governs every merchant in his own isolated position, and on account of which a protective system is less favored among merchants engaged in foreign commerce, than among other classes, and with the country generally. They usually

prefer freedom of commerce, that they may make their fortunes the quickest and easiest, without any regard to the good of the country. Hence a very prominent "JOURNAL," in the city of New York, professing to be neutral in politics, is supported as an advocate of Free Trade, by this interest. It may fairly be presumed that this "Journal" did not take this tack from principle, but because it had the sagacity to see there was room and would be profit. Other journals of the country, on the same side of the question, usually advocate Free Trade from motives of political partisanship; this for its own advantage, being in the heart of the greatest city of the continent, connected with foreign commerce.

Adam Smith has well described the character of this class of merchants, as follows: "The merchants know perfectly well in what manner foreign commerce enriches themselves. It is their business to know. But to know in what manner it enriches the country, is no part of their business. This subject never comes into their consideration." Again: "The capital of a wholesale merchant seems to have no fixed or necessary residence anywhere, but may wander about, from place to place, according as it can either buy cheap or sell dear. The capital of the manufacturer must, no doubt, reside where the manufacture is carried on." He adds for his own purposes, as pleading for Great Britain, against the colonies: "Whether the merchant, whose capital exports the surplus produce of any society, be a native or a foreigner, is of very little consequence." It is, however, of great consequence.

Joshua Gee says: "Nothing of this kind," that is, zeal for protection, "can be expected from the merchant, who only pursues his own business, and raises an estate by those things which the government permit the subject to trade in. He may get a great deal of riches by importing foreign manufactures for luxury and excess, when, at the same time, the nation is consuming its substance, and running into poverty." The editor of the sixth edition of Gee's work, 1755, also says: "It has been observed, that by the mutual opposition of those [merchants] who are engaged in different interests, they rather puzzle than give light to the argument in debate; and I must confess that I have usually found gentlemen who are not engaged in trade more ready to entertain right notions of commerce, as it respects the advantage or disadvantage of the public. Though otherwise knowing and well skilled in their own way, few merchants give themselves the trouble to look further than what concerns their own particular interest."