prime.
Keep your skins from Saxon lead;
Plunder paupers for your bread.
Popish begging is no crime:
Bide your time--bide your time!

[Greek: Aion.]

* * * * *

FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

Whoever has travelled in the highlands of Scotland, or the mountains of
Wales, must have observed the remarkable difference which exists between
artificial plantations, and the natural woods of the country. Planted _all
at once_, the former grow up of uniform height, and all their trees
present nearly the same form and symmetry. Sown at different periods, with
centuries between their growth, the latter exhibit every variety of age
and form, from the decaying patriarchs of the forest, which have survived
the blasts of some hundred years, to the infant sapling, which is only
beginning to shoot under the shelter of a projecting rock or stem. Nor is
the difference less remarkable in the room which is severally afforded for
growth, in the artificial plantations and in the wilds of nature. The
larches or firs, in the stiff and angular enclosure, are always crowded
together; and if not thinned by the care of the woodsman, will inevitably
choke each other, or shoot up thin and unhealthy, in consequence of their
close proximity to each other, and the dense mass of foliage which
overshadows the upper part of the wood. But no such danger need be
apprehended In the natural forest. No woodman is called to thin its
denizens. No forester's eye is required to tell which should be left, and
which cut away, in the vast array. In the ceaseless warfare of the weaker
with the stronger, the feeble plants are entirely destroyed. In vain the
infant sapling attempts to contend with the old oak, the branches of which
overshadow its growth--it is speedily crushed in the struggle. Nor are the
means of removing the useless remains less effectual. The hand of nature
insensibly clears the waste of its incumbrances; the weakness of time
brings them to the ground when their allotted period is expired; and youth,
as in the generations of men, springs beside the decay of age, and finds
ample room for its expansion over the fallen remains of its paternal stems.

The difference between the artificial plantation and the natural wood,
illustrates the distinction between the imaginary communities which the
political economist expects to see grow up, in conformity with his
theories, and acting in obedience to his dictates, an