at is,
inclusive of transit and special, had also materially improved; the
aggregate imports representing eighty-three millions of imports into,
against eighty-nine millions of exports from Switzerland; or that the
general trade with France had rather more than doubled since 1832,
imports and exports together. The transit portion of this general trade,
representing all the transmarine movement of Switzerland, is that
rather, it may be said, carried on with the United States Spanish
America, Brazil, &c., in which the greatest improvement of her foreign
trade had taken place. She has, on the contrary, very largely lost
ground in Germany, where she enjoyed marts for her manufactures, before
the establishment of the Commercial Union, of an extensive and
profitable description, from the advantages of her geographical
position; and it is probable, that from the same cause she will have
lost no inconsiderable portion of the share her merchants had in the
supply of Turkey, Persia, and other countries on the shores of the
Mediterranean and the Black Sea. With Holland and Belgium, her
commercial relations would seem to have been sensibly on the decline, so
far as the returns, available and comparative, enable us to form an
opinion. Upon a balance, therefore, of increase, upon one side, and
decrease on the other, there is reasonable ground to question any
progress in Switzerland, at all commensurate with the general
accelerated movement in manufactures and commerce of other industrial
countries about her, and beyond the seas; in exemplification of which,
we have on other occasions presented, as we shall continue to present,
evidence which may not be questioned.

Therefore, it results, that the second condition in proof of the
superiority of the free, or one-sided free trade principle, as
represented in Switzerland, the embodied _beau ideal_ of the theory, is
not fulfilled. It were easy, indeed, to show the absurdity of a
pretension to the rigorous reign of a principle, in a country where,
though the federal government levies are merely nominal duties on
imported commodities, for other than which it is and must ever be
powerless, whatever the will, yet in the separate cantons or chief towns
with barriers, scarcely any article enters and escapes without payment
of an octroi impost, equal to a moderate state duty on importation at
the ports or frontiers of other states. What would be said in this
country, if wool, cotton, or any com