time to
reflect; manufacturers, office-seekers, congressmen, and custom-house
officers, were consulted; and at last, after some years' deliberation,
it was declared that the negotiations were broken off.

At this news, the inhabitants of M*ntr**l held a council. An old man
(who it has always been supposed had been secretly bribed by N*w Y*rk)
rose and said: "The obstacles raised by N*w Y*rk are injurious to our
sales; this is a misfortune. Those which we ourselves create, injure
our purchases; this is a second misfortune. We have no power over the
first, but the second is entirely dependent upon ourselves. Let us
then at least get rid of one, since we cannot be delivered from both.
Let us suppress our corps of Obstructors, without waiting for N*w Y*rk
to do the same. Some day or other she will learn to better calculate
her own interests."

A second counsellor, a man of practice and of facts, uncontrolled by
principles and wise in ancestral experience, replied: "We must not
listen to this dreamer, this theorist, this innovator, this Utopian,
this political economist, this friend to N*w Y*rk. We would be
entirely ruined if the embarrassments of the road were not carefully
weighed and exactly equalized between N*w Y*rk and M*ntr**l. There
would be more difficulty in going than in coming; in exportation than
in importation. We would be with regard to N*w Y*rk, in the inferior
condition in which Havre, Nantes, Bordeaux, Lisbon, London, Hamburg,
and New Orleans, are, in relation to cities placed higher up the
rivers Seine, Loire, Garonne, Tagus, Thames, Elbe, and Mississippi;
for the difficulties of ascending must always be greater than those of
descending rivers."

"(A voice exclaims: 'But the cities near the mouths of rivers have
always prospered more than those higher up the stream.')

"This is not possible."

"(The same voice: 'But it is a fact.')

"Well, they have then prospered _contrary to rule_."

Such conclusive reasoning staggered the assembly. The orator went on
to convince them thoroughly and conclusively by speaking of national
independence, national honor, national dignity, national labor,
overwhelming importation, tributes, ruinous competition. In short, he
succeeded in determining the assembly to continue their system of
obstacles, and I can now point out a certain country where you may see
road-workers and Obstructors working with the best possible
understanding, by the decree of the same legislative