sing of goods)--in any such case, China
wilfully divested herself of all that original right to withdraw from
commercial intercourse. She might say _Go_, or she might say, _Come_;
but she could not first say, _Come_; and then, revoking this invitation,
capriciously say, _Go_.

[6] Down to George I. there _could_ have been no breakfast in England for a
gentleman or lady--there is none even yet in most parts of the
Continent--without wine of some class or other.

To this doctrine, thus limited, no man could reasonably demur. But to some
people it has seemed that the limitations themselves are the only unsound
part of the argument. It is denied that this original right of refusing a
commercial intercourse has any true foundation in the relations of things or
persons. Vainly, if any such natural right existed, would that broad basis
have been laid providentially for insuring intercourse among nations, which,
in fact, we find everywhere dispersed. Such a narrow and selfish
distribution of natural gifts, all to one man, or all to one place, has in a
first stage of human inter-relations been established, only that men might
be hurried forward into a second stage where this false sequestration might
be unlocked and dispersed. Concentrated masses, impropriations gathered into
a few hands, useless alike to the possessor and to the world, why is it
that, by primary arrangements of nature, they have been frozen into vast,
inert insulation? Only that the agencies of commerce may thus the more
loudly be invoked for thawing and setting them free to the world's use.
Whereas, by a diffusive scattering, all motives to large social intercourse
would have been neutralised.

It seems clear that the practical liberation and distribution throughout the
world of all good gifts meant for the whole household of man, has been
confided to the secret sense of a _right_ existing in man for claiming such
a distribution as part of his natural inheritance. Many articles of almost
inestimable value to man, in relation to his physical well-being (at any
rate bearing such a value when substitutional remedies were as yet unknown)
such as mercury, Jesuit's bark, through a long period the sole remedy for
intermitting fevers, opium, mineral waters, &c., were at one time _locally_
concentred. In such cases, it might often happen, that the medicinal relief
to an hospital, to an encampment, to a nation, might depend entirely upon
the right to _force_ a commerci