to protecting duties, which, while they admitted of the introduction of commodities from abroad similar to those which we ourselves manufactured, placed them so much on a level as to allow a competition between them.”  “No axiom,” he added, “was more true than this:  that it was by growing what the territory of a country could grow most cheaply, and by receiving from other countries what it could not produce except at too great an expense, that the greatest degree of happiness was to be communicated to the greatest extent of population.”

In assenting to the motion, the first minister[3] of the crown expressed his own opinion of the great advantage resulting from unrestricted freedom of trade.  “Of the soundness of that general principle,” he observed, “I can entertain no doubt.  I can entertain no doubt of what would have been the great advantages to the civilized world, if the system of unrestricted trade had been acted upon by every nation from the earliest period of its commercial intercourse with its neighbors.  If to those advantages there could have been any exceptions, I am persuaded that they would have been but few; and I am also persuaded that the cases to which they would have referred would not have been, in themselves, connected with the trade and commerce of England.  But we are now in a situation in which, I will not say that a reference to the principle of unrestricted trade can be of no use, because such a reference may correct erroneous reasoning, but in which it is impossible for us, or for any country in the world but the United States of America, to act unreservedly on that principle.  The commercial regulations of the European world have been long established, and cannot suddenly be departed from.”  Having supposed a proposition to be made to England by a foreign state for free commerce and intercourse, and an unrestricted exchange of agricultural products and of manufactures, he proceeds to observe:  “It would be impossible to accede to such a proposition.  We have risen to our present greatness under a different system.  Some suppose that we have risen in consequence of that system; others, of whom I am one, believe that we have risen in spite of that system.  But, whichever of these hypotheses be true, certain it is that we have risen under a very different system than that of free and unrestricted trade.  It is utterly impossible, with our debt and taxation, even if they were but half their existing amount, that we can suddenly adopt the system of free trade.”

Lord Ellenborough, in the same debate, said, “that he attributed the general distress then existing in Europe to the regulations that had taken place since the destruction of the French power.  Most of the states on the Continent had surrounded themselves as with walls of brass, to inhibit intercourse with other states.  Intercourse was prohibited, even in districts of the same state, as was the case in Austria and Sardinia.  Thus, though the taxes on the people