consequent diminution in the power to become customers to other nations. * In all the countries which follow in the lead of Colbert and of Adam Smith, agriculture becomes a science, the land yields larger crops in each successive year, with corresponding increase of wealth and power. In those which follow in the lead of England and her economists, the reverse of this is seen - - agriculture ceasing to be a science, and their people becoming poorer and more enslaved. The first, import the precious metals. The last, export them. The first, find daily increase of power to maintain a specie circulation, as the basis of the higher and better currency supplied by banks. The last-gradually losing the power to command a circulation of any kind are tending towards that barbaric system of commerce which consists in exchanging labor against food, or wool and corn against cloth. The more valuable the labor of the individual, the greater is his power to be a customer to his neighbors. So, too, is it with nations - their power to benefit others being in the direct ratio of their ability to protect themselves. Here we have harmony -all communities profiting by the adoption, in each and every other, of those measures of co-ordination which tend to the promotion of internal commerce. The reverse of this, however, is taught in the British school-cheap labor and cheap raw mate *The weight of the tax thus imposed, increases as the prices of rude products decline. That those of American commodities do decline, has been shown in a former chapter. (See Chap. XXVI.) How this operates upon American farmers and planters is shown by the following facts. In 1834-5, when the raw produce exported amounted to $92,000,000, the shipping, domestic and foreign, that cleared for foreign ports, amounted to 2,030,000 tons. Six years later, in 1840-1, the amount was $98,000,000—the quantity of shipping clearing for foreign ports having, in the same period, risen to 2,353,000 tons. In 1856, the total value of these exports was $230,000,000, while the quantity of shipping leaving for foreign ports amounted to little less than 7,000,000 tons-the increase in the former, in twenty years, having been but 150 per cent., while that of the latter had been little short of 850 per cent. + Dr. Smith's preference for domestic over foreign commerce, is well known to all the readers of his great work. Each act of commerce making two demands for human service, he saw clearly, that the nearer the parties to each other, the more numerous must be the demands for service, and the larger the production. Therefore, did he assure his readers, that capital employed in the home trade gave four and twenty times "more encouragement and support to the industry of the country," than could be given by an equal amount in the foreign one.-See Wealth of Nations, Book II., chap. v. rials, bringing with them universal discord, being there regarded as the essential objects of desire. Real freedom of trade consists in the power to maintain direct commerce with the whole of the outside world. To have it, there must be diversity of employments-enabling the exporting country to send its commodities abroad in a finished shape. Centralization, such as is established by the British system, is opposed to this, and therefore is it, that it is resisted by all the advancing communities of the world. Protection being the form assumed by that resistance, its object may be defined as being, that of establishing perfect freedom of commerce among the nations of the world. -- § 6. The more that a community finishes its raw productscombining its food, its wool, its fuel, and its ores, into cloth and iron the greater, as we see, is its power to exchange them with all the world. Is that, however, the highest point to which commerce may be carried? It is not the ultimate object of all human effort being the production of the being known as MAN, capable of the highest aspirations. The more perfect his development, the greater is his desire for knowledge; the greater is his love for literature and art; the greater is his desire to see for himself the movements of the world, and to learn from those who are capable of affording him instruction. Each and every stage of advance towards diversification of employments, tends towards development of the human faculties; towards fitting man for the higher enjoyments of life; towards elevating the character of his demands upon other communities— the products of mind, taste, and skill, gradually taking the place of those which have required for their production little more than mere brute force. Looking now to Central and Northern Europe-to those countries which follow in the lead of Colbert-we see them all to be engaged in increasing the attractions of their respective local centres - Prussia and Bavaria, France and Belgium, Sweden and Denmark, now vieing with each other in the effort to render their various capitals, large and small, attractive of the taste, the intellect, and the wealth, of the world at large. Turning thence to those which follow in the lead of England, we find the reverse of this- Edinburgh and Dublin, Lima and Delhi, Lisbon and Constantinople, diminishing in their attractions from year to year. So, too, is it in the United States - the attractions of local centres steadily declining, with corresponding growth of absenteeism, and belief in the divine origin of human slavery, and in the necessity for its continued existence. Examine where we may, we shall find evidence of the perfect harmony of all real and permanent international interests-peace and commerce holding steady pace with that exercise of the power of co-ordination which looks to the removal of obstacles to combination, and to the creation of local centres of action, in which trade, manufactures, and agriculture, are combined in just proportions. Moving in that direction, the societary organization of the world at large becomes more and more in harmony with the arrangements of the physical world, and with the organization of man himself the subordination of all the parts becoming more complete as the organization becomes more perfect.-War and discord, with their attendant insubordination, and with the decline of commerce, follow in the train of centralization-that being the direction in which we must seek for facts to be adduced in proof of the disease of over-population.* That advantage is to be derived from the pursuit of an honest international policy, and that disadvantage results from the pursuits of a dishonest one, are fully proved by the Chinese trade of the last thirty years. The opium war was closed by a treaty providing for the opening of certain Chinese ports, since which time, the course of trade, compared with that which previously had existed, has been as follows: 1834 British Exports previous to the War. 1836 £1,326,388 For the period following the opening of the market in 1842, and the acquisition of Hong Kong, they have been as follows: English journalists seek to account for the stationary character of the trade, by proving the difficulty of maintaining competition with America in cottons, and with Germany and Russia in woollens. A stronger argument in favor of protection could scarcely be adduced-the manufactures of these latter countries having owed their existence to protective measures of the most stringent character, and the power to compete for the sale of cloth in other lands, furnishing conclusive evidence of the cheapness with which the men who produce the cotton and the wool are supplied at home. CHAPTER LIV. OF THE SOCIETARY ORGANIZATION. § 1. THROUGHOUT nature, the rank and perfection of organisms are in direct proportion to the number and dissimilarity of the parts, proof of this being found at every stage of progress from the simplest composition of inorganic matter, up to the structure of MAN, in whom are reproduced all the forms and faculties of being, over which, for the service of his needs, it has been given. to him to rule. This law not only marks the relative rank of classes of creatures, but it serves, also, to measure the respective positions of the individuals of whom the several classes are composed the nearest approach to perfection being found in those men in whom the distinctive human qualities are found most active, and most developed. Following out the rule, those communities of men in which are found the largest variety of differences, and the most effective development of them into action, should present the nearest approach to perfection of societary organization. Seeking such communities, we find them in those in which the demands for human powers are most diversified — those in which men are enabled most fully to combine their efforts rapid societary motion there stimulating into activity all the power that, thus far, has remained latent, and enabling their members to pass from the brutifying labors of transportation, through those of the workshop, to those of a scientific agriculture. Subordination of specialities to a general intention - diversity of functions or uses, so combined as to produce a perfect harmony of related action-is, at once, the mark and test of organization.* The individual man is healthy and efficient within himself, in proportion to the vigor and exactness with which the bodily instruments of his will obey the governing brain - those charged with * See ante, vol. i., p. 53. carrying on his automatic life, meanwhile furnishing full support to his voluntary powers. Absolute subordination in the parts of a machine to the moving force, is the constant characteristic of inanimate organizations. In a watch, steam-engine, mill, or ship, all the parts are in prompt and complete obedience — their perfection being measured by the exactness of their subordination. In societary organizations, we have the same law modified, but not repealed, by the liberty which accompanies human lifebringing with it responsibility to both God and man. The crew of a ship the hands employed in a factory-the thousands of whom an army is composed-are organized and subordinated, that they may accomplish the work for whose performance they have been brought together. So, too, is it in civil governmentsubordination of the subjects being essential to the well-being and the progress of the community, and to those very individual liberties which it limits, as well as to the national order for whose security it has been designed the most remarkable case of societary organization on record, being that under which the Hebrews sojourned in the desert, during the long period that intervened between the passage of the Red Sea, and their entrance into the promised land. Throughout nature, the more perfect the organization, and the more absolute the subordination, the more harmonious and beautiful is the interdependence of the parts. A rock, or a lump of coal being broken, each and every portion remains as perfect as it had been before. Dividing a polypus into a dozen parts, the vital force is found existing in each and all, and to such extent, that each becomes again a perfect animal. Doing the same by man, he speedily passes into dust.. So, too, is it with societies growing with every stage the mutuality of interdependence of progress, from that simplest of societary forms presented to view in the history of Crusoe and his Friday, towards that high state of organization in which tens of thousands of persons combine to satisfy the public want for a single newspaper-hundreds of thousands then profiting by its perusal at a cost so small as scarcely to admit of calculation.* Throughout nature, the more complete the subordination, and *See ante, vol. ii., p. 296. |