at nation, the
amount of exporting and importing, of buying and selling almost every
conceivable article under the sun, is carried on in the millions and
millions of dollars; and so perfect has the organization for doing
this business become in every great country, that the products of
the most distant countries can be bought in almost every village;
and any important event in any country produces a perceptible effect
wherever the mail and telegraph go.

The organization for effecting this in every country is so excellent
and so wonderful, that it is like a machine.

In fact, it is a machine, and with all the faults of a machine.
Now one of the faults of a machine, a fault which increases in
importance with the complexity of the machine, is the enormous
disturbance which may be produced by a cause seemingly trivial.
That such is the case with the machine which the commerce of every
great nation comprises, every-day experience confirms. So long
as the steamers come and go with scheduled regularity, so long
will the money come in at the proper intervals and be distributed
through the various channels; so long will the people live the
lives to which they are habituated; so long will order reign.

But suppose the coming and going of all the steamers were suddenly
stopped by a blockade. While it may be true that, in a country like
the United States, no foreign trade is really necessary; while it
may be true that the people of the United States would be just as
happy, though not so rich, if they had no foreign trade--yet the
sudden stoppage of foreign trade would not bring about a condition
such as would have existed if we had never had any foreign trade,
but would bring about a chaotic condition which cannot fitly be
described by a feebler word than "horrible." The whole machinery of
every-day life would be disabled. Hundreds of thousands of people
would be thrown out of employment, and the whole momentum of the
rapidly moving enormous mass of American daily life would receive
a violent shock which would strain to its elastic limit every part
of the entire machine.

It would take a large book to describe what would ensue from the
sudden stoppage of the trade of the United States with countries
over the sea. Such a book would besides be largely imaginative;
because in our history such a condition has never yet arisen. Although
wars have happened in the past in which there has been a blockade
of our coast more or less co