The great distance of India from the British islands, the vast expense of transporting bulky articles eight thousand miles accross the ocean, have prevented the counterpart of this effect taking place; and the British farmers feeling the depressing influence of the Indian plough, in like manner as the Indian manufacturers have the ruinous competition of the British steam-engine.  But it is clear that, if India had been nearer, the former effect would have taken place as well as the latter.  If the shores of Hindostan were within a few days sail of London and Liverpool, and the Indian cultivators, labouring at 2d. or 3d. a-day, had been brought into direct competition with the British farmers, employing labourers who received two or three shillings, can there be a doubt that the British farmers would have been totally destroyed in the struggle?  The English farmers would have been prostrated by the same cause which has ruined the Indian muslin manufacturers.  Cheap grain, the fruit of free trade, would have demolished British agriculture as completely as cheap cotton goods, the fruits of unlimited importation, has ruined Indian manufacturing industry.

Is, then, commercial intercourse impossible, on terms of mutual benefit, between states in widely different circumstatnces of commercial or agricultural advancement; and is the only reciprocity which can exist between them and reciprocity of evil?  It is by no means necessary to rest in so unsatisfatory a conclusion.  A most advantageous commercial intercourse to both parties may be carried on, but it must not be on the footing of free trade.  The foundation of such an intercourse should be, that each should take, on the most favourable terms, the articles which it wants and does not produce, and impose restrictions on those which it wants and does produce.  On this priciple, trade would be conducted so as to benefit both countries, and injure neither.  Thus England may take from India to the utmost extent, and with perfect safety, sugar, indigo, cotton, tea, spices, cinnamon, and the more costly species of shawls; while India might take from England some species of cotton manufacture in which they have no fabrics of their own, cutlery, hardware, and all of the various luxuries of European manufacture.  But a paternal and just government, equally alive to the interests of all its provinces, how far removed soever from the seat of power, would impose restrictions to prevent India being deluged with British cottons, to the ruin of its native manufactures, and to prevent Britian—­if the distance did not operate, which it certainly would, as a sufficient protection—­from being flooded with Indian grain.  The varieties of climate, productions, and wants, in different countries, are such, that commerce, regulated on these principles, might be carried to the greatest extent consistent with the paramount duty of providing in each state for the preservation of its staple articles of industry.