free trade ports have exactions
that, in a degree, counteract their pretended principle of liberty; and
no free port exists, that is anything more, in a strict interpretation
of its uses, than a sort of bonded warehouse. So long as your goods
remain there, on deposit and unappropriated, they are not taxed; but the
instant they are taken to the _consumer_, the customary impositions must
be paid.

_Freer_ trade--that is, a trade which is less encumbered than some
admitted state of things which previously existed--is easily enough
comprehended; but, instead of conveying to the mind any general theory,
it merely shows that a lack of wisdom may have prevailed in the
management of some particular interest; which lack of wisdom is now
being tardily repaired. Prohibitions, whether direct, or in the form of
impositions that the trade will not bear, may be removed without leaving
trade _free_. This or that article may be thrown open to the general
competition, without import duty or tax of any sort, and yet the great
bulk of the commerce of a country be so fettered as to put an effectual
check upon anything like liberal intercourse. Suppose, for instance,
that Virginia were an independent country. Its exports would be tobacco,
flour, and corn; the tobacco crop probably more than equalling in value
those portions of the other crops which are sent out of the country.
England is suffering for food, and she takes off everything like imposts
on the eatables, while she taxes tobacco to the amount of many hundred
per cent. Can that be called free trade?

There is another point of view in which we could wish to protest against
the shouts and fallacies of the hour. Trade, perhaps the most corrupt
and corrupting influence of life--or, if second to anything in evil,
second only to politics--is proclaimed to be the great means of
humanizing, enlightening, liberalizing, and improving the human race!
Now, against this monstrous mistake in morals, we would fain raise our
feeble voices in sober remonstrance. That the intercourse which is a
consequence of commerce may, in certain ways, liberalize a man's views,
we are willing to admit; though, at the same time, we shall insist that
there are better modes of attaining the same ends. But it strikes us as
profane to ascribe to this frail and mercenary influence a power which
there is every reason to believe the Almighty has bestowed on the
Christian church, and on that alone; a church which is opp