e most important branch of industry of each would
have been secured an inlet into the other's territories. The British
tonnage might have been driven out of the Baltic trade by the shipowners
of Denmark and Norway, but the Prussian cotton manufacturers would have
been crushed by the British. It might then have come to be a question of
whether the upholding of our shipping interest or the extension of our
cotton manufactures was the most advisable policy. But no such question
need be considered now. We have gained nothing by exposing our shipping
interest to the ruinous competition of the Baltic vessels. The Danish,
Norwegian and Prussian ships have come into our harbours, but the British
cotton and iron goods have not entered theirs. The reciprocity system has
been all on one side. After having been twenty years in operation, it has
failed in producing _the smallest concession_ in favour of British
manufactures, or producing in those states with whom the reciprocity
treaties were concluded, the _smallest extension of British exports_.
Since we so kindly permitted it, they have taken every thing and given
nothing. They have done worse. They have taken good and returned evil. The
vast concession contained in the repeal of our navigation laws, has been
answered by the enhanced duties contained in the Prussian Zollverein.
Twenty-six millions of Germans have been arrayed under a commercial league,
which, by levying duties, practically varying from thirty to fifty, though
nominally only ten _per cent_, effectually excludes British manufactures;
and, after twenty years' experience, our exports are only a few hundred
thousands a year, and our exports of cotton manufactures _only a few
hundreds a year_, to the whole States of Northern Europe, in favour of
whom the navigation laws were swept away, and an irreparable wound
inflicted on British maritime interests, and in whose wants Mr Huskisson
anticipated a vast market for our manufacturing industry, and an ample
compensation for the diminution of our shipping interest.

Nature has established this great and all-important distinction between
the effects of wealth and national age on the productions of agriculture
and of manufactures. The reason is this:--If capital, machinery, and
knowledge, conferred the same immediate and decisive advantage on
agricultural that they do on manufacturing industry, old and
densely-peopled states would possess an undue superiority over the ruder
and