ce in their age, the inequality in their growth, the
variety in their texture, is as great as in the trees of the forest, the
seeds of which have been scattered by the hand of nature; that the
incessant warfare of the weaker with the stronger, exists not less in the
social than the physical world; and that all systems founded on the
oblivion of that continued contest, must ever be traversed by the
strongest of all moral laws--the instinct of SELF-PRESERVATION.

We have said that the modern theories when applied to practice, have, in a
remarkable manner, failed. In saying so, we have chiefly in view the
acknowledged failure of the strenuous efforts made by England, during the
last twenty years, to effect an interchange in the advantages of free
trade, and the entire disappointment which has attended the long
establishment, on a great scale, of the reciprocity system. To the first
we shall advert in the present paper; the second will furnish ample room
for reflection in another.

The abstract principles on which the doctrines of free trade are founded,
are these; and we put it to the warmest advocates of those principles,
whether they are not fairly stated. All nations were not intended by
nature, nor are they fitted by their physical circumstances, to excel in
the same branches of industry; and it is the variety in the production
which they severally can bring to maturity, which at once imposes the
necessity for, and occasions the profit of, commercial intercourse.
Nothing, therefore, can be so unwise as to attempt, either by arbitrary
regulations, to create a branch of industry in a country for which it is
not intended by nature, or to retain it in that branch where it is created
by forced prohibitions. Banish all restrictions, therefore, from commerce;
let every nation apply itself to that particular branch of industry for
which it is adapted by nature, and receive in exchange the produce of
other countries, raised, in like manner, in conformity with their natural
capabilities. Then will the industry of each people be turned into the
channel most advantageous and lucrative to itself; each will enjoy the
immense advantage of purchasing the commodities it requires at the
cheapest possible rate; hopeless or absurd hot-bed attempts to force
extraneous industry will cease; and, in the mutual interchange of the
surplus produce of each, the foundation will be laid of an advantageous
and durable commercial intercourse. England