enders
Russia prosperous, though proportionally not more largely gifted with
those natural elements of wealth and production which consist in
fertility of soil, in mines of the precious metals, of coal, iron, &c.
We shall pursue our task to its completion before we proceed to draw and
sum up those conclusions which must follow from the premises
established, before we enter in order upon the analysis and dissection
of the one absolute principle or theory, by which, in the conceit of
certain sage travellers on the royal railroad to wisdom, eager for the
end and impatient of the toil of thinking, the economical destinies of
all nations should be cut, carved, and adjusted _secundum artem_, with
mathematical precision and uniformity, according to the rule invariable
of robber Procrustes, the ancient founder of the sect, who constructed a
bed--that is, a system of certain proportions of size--that is, upon a
certain principle--upon which he laid his victims; those found too short
to fit the dimensions of the pallet, he stretched and tortured into the
length required; those too long he fitted by decapitating the
superabundance of head and shoulders, or by squaring off the legs and
feet; just as economists would sever nations with their invariable
system; just as, with their selfish and one-sided, sordid idea, the
junta of Leaguers, rule and plummet in hand, would deal with the British
empire, with its vast possessions in every clime, on which the sun never
sets, peopled by races numerous and diverse of origin as of interests,
multifarious, complicated, often conflicting. "_L'etat_," said Louis le
Grand, "_c'est moi_." "The British empire"--bellows Syntax Cobden--"'tis
_me_ and printed calicoes." "The British government and
legislature"--exclaims Friend Bright--"'tis I and Rochdale flannel."

It is a strange, and, with our qualified and not exclusive opinions, not
less a discouraging complication of affairs with which we have to deal,
that, look among the great nations where we will, we find, to a great
extent, that the protective system of commerce, where in force, or where
it has superseded a _quasi_ free-trade system before in force, has
conduced, in no small degree, to the advancement of material interests.
The Germanic Customs' Union, that peculiar handicraft creation of Lord
Palmerston, is there to confirm the fact, no less than Russia, than
France, than Belgium, and other lands. The League themselves
ostentatiously procl