as having attempted to naturalize the manufacture of cotton in France.  He did not cite a more extravagant part of the projects of that ruler, that is, his attempt to naturalize the growth of that plant itself, in France; whereas, we have understood that considerable districts in the South of France, and in Italy, of rich and productive lands, were at one time withdrawn from profitable uses, and devoted to raising, at great expense, a little bad cotton.  Nor have we been referred to the attempts, under the same system, to make sugar and coffee from common culinary vegetables; attempts which served to fill the print-shops of Europe, and to show us how easy is the transition from what some think sublime to that which all admit to be ridiculous.  The folly of some of these projects has not been surpassed, nor hardly equalled, unless it be by the philosopher in one of the satires of Swift, who so long labored to extract sunbeams from cucumbers.

The poverty and unhappiness of Spain have been attributed to the want of protection to her own industry.  If by this it be meant that the poverty of Spain is owing to bad government and bad laws, the remark is, in a great measure, just.  But these very laws are bad because they are restrictive, partial, and prohibitory.  If prohibition were protection, Spain would seem to have had enough of it.  Nothing can exceed the barbarous rigidity of her colonial system, or the folly of her early commercial regulations.  Unenlightened and bigoted legislation, the multitude of holidays, miserable roads, monopolies on the part of government, restrictive laws, that ought long since to have been abrogated, are generally, and I believe truly, reckoned the principal causes of the bad state of the productive industry of Spain.  Any partial improvement in her condition, or increase of her prosperity, has been, in all cases, the result of relaxation, and the abolition of what was intended for favor and protection.

In short, Sir, the general sense of this age sets, with a strong current, in favor of freedom of commercial intercourse, and unrestrained individual action.  Men yield up their notions of monopoly and restriction, as they yield up other prejudices, slowly and reluctantly; but they cannot withstand the general tide of opinion.

Let me now ask, Sir, what relief this bill proposes to some of those great and essential interests of the country, the condition of which has been referred to as proof of national distress; and which condition, although I do not think it makes out a case of distress, yet does indicate depression.

And first, Sir, as to our foreign trade.  Mr. Speaker has stated that there has been a considerable falling off in the tonnage employed in that trade.  This is true, lamentably true.  In my opinion, it is one of those occurrences which ought to arrest our immediate, our deep, our most earnest attention.  What does this bill propose for its relief?  It proposes nothing but new burdens.  It proposes