protection from infant industries, and either they perish, or those who work in them sink to the condition of the laboring classes of Europe.  Nor do I believe it is a good thing for a nation to have all its eggs in one basket.  I would not make this country exclusively agricultural because we have boundless fields and can raise corn cheap, any more than I would recommend a Minnesota farmer to raise nothing but wheat.  Insects and mildews and unexpected heats may blast a whole harvest, and the farmer has nothing to fall back upon.  He may make more money, for a time, by raising wheat exclusively; but he impoverishes his farm.  He should raise cattle and sheep and grass and vegetables, as well as wheat or corn.  Then he is more independent and more intelligent, even as a nation is by various industries, which call out all kinds of talent.

I know that this is a controverted point.  Everything is controverted in political economy.  There is scarcely a question which is settled in its whole range of subjects; and I know that many intellectual and enlightened men are in favor of what they call free-trade, especially professors in colleges.  But there is no such thing as free-trade, strictly, in any nation, or in the history of nations.  No nation legislates for universal humanity on philanthropic principles; it legislates for itself.  There is no country where there are not high duties on some things, not even England.  No nation can be governed on abstract principles and in disregard of its necessities.  When it was for the interest of England to remove duties on corn, in order that manufactures might be stimulated, they took off duties on corn, because the laboring-classes in the mills had to be fed.  Agricultural interests gave way, for a time, to manufacturing interests, because the wealth of the country was based on them rather than on lands, and because landlords did not anticipate that bread-stuffs brought from this country would interfere with the value of their rents.  But England, with all her proud and selfish boasts about free-trade, may yet have to take a retrograde course, like France and Prussia, or her landed interests may be imperilled.  The English aristocracy, who rule the country, cannot afford to have the value of their lands reduced one-half, for those lands are so heavily mortgaged that such a reduction of value would ruin them; nor will they like to be forced to raise vegetables rather than wheat, and turn themselves into market-gardeners instead of great proprietors.  The landlords of Great Britain may yet demand protection for themselves, and, as they control Parliament, they will look out for themselves by enacting measures of protection, unless they are intimidated by the people who demand cheap bread, or unless they submit to revolution.  It is eternal equity and wisdom that the weak should be protected.  There may be industries strong enough now to dispense with protection; but unless they are assisted when they are feeble,