The free traders fully admit, and deeply deplore, as we have shown on a former occasion, these unfavourable results; but they say that it is to be hoped they will not continue:  that foreign nations must, in the end, come to see that they are as much interested as we are in enlightened system of free trade; and that, meantime, it is for our interest to continue the system; or even though it totally fails in producing any augmentation in our exports, it is obviously for our advantage to continue it, as it brings in the immediate benefit of purchasing articles imported at a cheaper rate.  Supposing, say they, we obtain no corresponding advantage from other states, there is an immense benefit accrues to ourselves from admitting foreign goods at a nominal duty, from the low price at which they may be purchased by the British consumer.  To that point we shall advert in the sequel; in the mean time, it may be considered as demonstrated, that the free trade system has entirely failed in procuring for us the slightest extension of our foreign exports, or abating in the slightest degree the jealousy of foreign nations at our maritime and manufacturing superiority.  Nor is there any difficulty in discovering to what this failure has been owing.  It arises from laws inherent in the nature of things, and which will remain unabated as long as we continue a great and prosperous nation.

It is related of the Lacedemonians, that while all the other citizens of Greece were careful to surround their towns with walls, they alone left a part open on all sides.  Thus, superiority in the field rendered them indifferent to the adventitious protection of ramparts.  It is for a similar reason that England is now willing to throw down the barriers of tariffs, and the impediments of custom-houses; and that all other nations are fain to raise them up.  It is a secret sense of superiority on the one side, and of inferiority on the other, which is the cause of the difference.  We advocate freedom of trade, because we are conscious that, in a fair unrestricted competition, we should succeed in beating them out of their own market.  They resist it, and loudly clamour for protection, because they are aware that such a result would speedily take place, and that the superiority of the old commercial state is such, that on an open trial of strength, it must at once prove fatal to its younger rivals.  As this effect is thus the result of permanent causes affecting both sides, it may fairly be presumed that it will be lasting; and that the more anxiously the old manufacturing state advocates or acts upon freedom of commercial intercourse, the more strenuously will the younger and rising ones advocate protection.  Reciprocity, therefore, is out of the question between them:  for it never could exist without the destruction of the manufactures of the younger state; and if that state has begun to enter on the path of manufacturing industry, it never will be permitted by its government.