capital would have produced at home had it been left to follow its natural course. The industry of the country, therefore, is thus turned away from a more to a less advantageous employment; and the changeable value of its annual produce, instead of being increased according to the intention of the lawgiver, must necessarily be diminished, by every such regulation.

By means of such regulations, indeed, a particular manufacture may sometimes be acquired sooner than it could have been otherwise, and after a certain time may be made at home as cheap or cheaper than in the foreign country. But though the industry of the society may be thus carried with advantage into a particular channel sooner than it could have been otherwise, it will by no means follow that the sum total, either of its industry or of its revenue, can ever be augmented by any such regulation. The industry of the society can augment only in proportion as its capital augments, and its capital can augment only in proportion to what can be gradually saved out of its revenue. But the immediate effect of every such regulation is to diminish its revenue; and what diminishes its revenue is certainly not very likely to augment its capital faster than it would have augmented of its own accord, had both its capital and its industry been left to find out their natural employments.

Though for want of such regulations the society should never acquire the proposed manufacture, it would not upon that account necessarily be the poorer in any one period of its duration. In every period of its duration its whole capital and industry might still have been employed, though upon different objects, in the manner that was most advantageous at the time. In every period its revenue might have been the greatest which its capital could afford; and both capital and revenue might have been augmented with the greatest possible rapidity.

The natural advantages which one country has over another in producing particular commodities are sometimes so great that it is acknowledged by all the world to be in vain to struggle with them. By means of glasses, hot-beds, and hot-walls, very good grapes can be raised in Scotland, and very good wine too can be made of them, at about thirty times the expense for which at least equally good can be brought from foreign countries. Would it be a reasonable law to prohibit the importation of all foreign wines merely to encourage the making of claret and burgundy in Scotland? But if there would be a manifest absurdity in turning towards any employment thirty times

more of the capital and industry of the country than would be necessary to purchase from foreign countries an equal quantity of the commodities wanted, there must be an absurdity, though not altogether so glaring, yet exactly of the same kind, in turning towards any such employment a thirtieth, or even a threehundreth part more of either. Whether the advantages which one country has over another be natural or acquired is in this respect of no consequence. As long as the one country has those advantages and the other wants them, it will always be more advantageous for the latter rather to buy of the former than to make. It is an acquired advantage only which one artificer has over his neighbor who exercises another trade; and yet they both find it more advantageous to buy of one another than to make what does not belong to their particular trades.

FRANCIS HOPKINSON SMITH.

SMITH, FRANCIS HOPKINSON, an American civil engineer, artist, and author; born at Baltimore, Maryland, October 23, 1838. Among the works which he has built as civil engineer are several for the United States Government. He is a self-taught painter, painting chiefly in water-colors. He is a member of the American Water-color Society. As an author, he is a writer of fiction and descriptive sketches. He published "Well Worn Roads of Spain, Holland, and Italy" (1886); "A Book of the Tile Club" (1887); "A White Umbrella in Mexico " (1889); "Colonel Carter of Cartersville" (1891): "A Day at Laguerre's, and Other Days," nine sketches (1892); "American Illustrators" (1892); "A Gentleman Vagabond and Some Others" (1895); "Tom Grogan " (1897); "Espero Gorgoni, Gondolier;" "Caleb West, Master Diver" (1898).

AN ALLUSION TO A YELLOW DOG.1

(From "Colonel Carter of Cartersville.")

THE colonel's office, like many other of his valued possessions, was in fact the property of somebody else.

It really belonged to a friend of Fitzpatrick, who had become so impressed by the Virginian's largeness of manner and buoyancy of enthusiasm that he had whispered to Fitz to bring him in at once and give him any desk in the place; adding that "in a sagging market the colonel would be better than a war boom." So the colonel moved in-not a very complicated operation in his case; his effects being confined to an old leather portfolio and a bundle of quill pens tied up with a bit of Aunt Nancy's white yarn. The following day he had nailed his visiting card above the firm's name in the corridor, hung his hat and coat on the proprietor's peg, selected a desk nearest the light, and was as much at home in five minutes as if he owned the whole building.

1 Copyright 1891. By permission of Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.

There was no price agreed upon. Once, when Fitz delicately suggested that all such rents were generally payable monthly, the colonel, after some difficulty in grasping the idea, had said:

"I could not offer it, suh. These gentlemen have treated me with a hospitality so generous that its memory will never fade from my mind. I cannot bring our relations down to the level of bargain and sale, suh; it would be vulgar."

The colonel was perfectly sincere. As for himself he would have put every room in his own Carter Hall at their service for any purpose or for any length of time, and have slept in the woodshed himself; and he would as soon have demanded the value of the bottle of wine on his own table as ask pay for such trivial courtesies.

Nor did he stop at the rent. The free use of stamps, envelopes, paper, messenger service, and clerks were to him only evidences of a lordly sort of hospitality which endeared the real proprietor of the office all the more to him, because it recalled the lavish display of the golden days of Carter Hall.

"Permit a guest to stamp his own letters, suh? Never! Our servants attended to that."

Really he owed his host nothing. No office of its size in the Street made so much money for its customers in a bull market. Nobody lost heart in a tumble and was sold out — that is, nobody to whom the colonel talked. Once convince the enthusiastic Virginian that the scheme was feasible, and how little eloquence was needed for that! and the dear old fellow took hold with as much gusto as if it had been his own.

The vein in the copper mine was always going to widen out into a six-foot lead; never by any possibility could it grow any smaller. The trust shares were going up- "not a point or two at a time, gentlemen, but with the spring of a panther, suh." Of course the railroad earnings were a little off this month, but wait until the spring opened; "then, suh, you will see a revival that will sweep you off yo' feet."

Whether it was good luck, or the good heart that the colonel put into his friend's customers, the results were always the same. Singular as it may seem, his cheery word just at the right time tided over the critical moment many an uncertain watcher at the "ticker," often to an enlargement of his bank account. Nor would he allow any one to pay him for any service of this kind, even though he had spent days engrossed in their affairs.

"Take money, suh, for helpin' a friend out of a hole? My dear suh, I see you do not intend to be disco'teous; but look at me, suh! There's my hand; never refer to it again." And then he would offer the offender his card in the hope, perhaps, that its ample record might furnish some further slight suggestion as to who he really was.

His popularity, therefore, was not to be wondered at. Everybody regarded him kindly, total stranger as he was, and although few of them believed to any extent in his "Garden Spot of Virginia," as his pet enterprise soon came to be known around the Street, everybody wished it well, and not a few would have started it with a considerable subscription could the colonel have managed the additional thousands required to set it on its financial legs.

Fitz never lost heart in the scheme, that is, never when the colonel was about. As the weeks rolled by and one combination after the other failed, and the well-thumbed bundle of papers in the big blue envelope was returned with various comments: "In view of our present financial engagements we are unable to undertake your very attractive railroad scheme," or the more curt "Not suited to our line of customers," he would watch the colonel's face anxiously, and rack his brain for some additional excuse.

He always found one. Tight money, or news from Europe, or an overissue of similar bonds; next week it would be better. And the colonel always believed him. Fitz was his guiding star, and would lead him to some safe haven yet. This faith was his stronghold, and his only one.

This morning, however, there was a touch of genuine enthusiasm about Fitz. He rushed into the office, caught up the blue bundle and the map, nearly upsetting the colonel, who was balanced back in his chair with his long legs over the desk,- a favorite attitude when down town, - rushed out, and returned in half an hour with a fat body surmounted by a bald head fringed about with gray curls.

He was the advance agent of that mysterious combination known to the financial world as an "English syndicate," an elusive sort of commercial sea-serpent with its head in London and its tail around the globe. The "inquiry" which had so gladdened the colonel's heart the morning of the breakfast with Aunt Nancy had proceeded from this rotund negotiator.

The colonel had, as usual, started the road at Cartersville,