persuasively urged
it upon all lands with which she had commercial intercourse.
Maintaining the most arbitrary and most complicated system of
protection so long as her statesmen considered that policy
advantageous, she resorted to free-trade only when she felt able
to invade the domestic markets of other countries and undersell
the fabrics produced by struggling artisans who were sustained by
weaker capital and by less advanced skill. So long as there was
danger that her own marts might be invaded, and the products of
her looms and forges undersold at home, she rigidly excluded the
competing fabric and held her own market for her own wares.

FREE-TRADE POLICY OF ENGLAND.

England was however neither consistent nor candid in her advocacy
and establishment of free-trade. She did not apply it to all
departments of her enterprise, but only to those in which she felt
confident that she could defy competition. Long after the triumph
of free-trade in manufactures, as proclaimed in 1846, England
continued to violate every principle of her own creed in the
protection she extended to her navigation interests. She had
nothing to fear from the United States in the domain of manufacturers,
and she therefore asked us to give her the unrestricted benefit of
our markets in exchange for a similar privilege which she offered
to us in her markets. But on the sea we were steadily gaining upon
her, and in 1850-55 were nearly equal to her in aggregate tonnage.
We could build wooden vessels at less cost than England and our
ships excelled hers in speed. When steam began to compete with
sail she saw her advantage. She could build engines at less cost
than we, and when, soon afterward, her ship-builders began to
construct the entire steamer of iron, her advantages became evident
to the whole world.

England was not content however with the superiority which these
circumstances gave to her. She did not wait for her own theory of
Free-trade to work out its legitimate results, but forthwith
stimulated the growth of her steam marine by the most enormous
bounties ever paid by any nation to any enterprise. To a single
line of steamers running alternate weeks from Liverpool to Boston
and New York, she paid nine hundred thousand dollars annually, and
continued to pay at this extravagant rate for at least twenty years.
In all channels of trade where steam could be employed she paid
lavish subsi