e meaning of three
or four words, and all is done.

Such a word is _invasion_ itself. An owner of an American furnace
says, "Preserve us from the _invasion_ of English iron." An English
landlord exclaims, "Let us repel the _invasion_ of American wheat!"
And so they propose to erect barriers between the two nations.
Barriers constitute isolation, isolation leads to hatred, hatred to
war, and war to _invasion_. "Suppose it does," say the two sophists;
"is it not better to expose ourselves to the chance of an eventual
_invasion_, than to accept a certain one?" And the people still
believe, and the barriers still remain.

Yet what analogy is there between an exchange and an _invasion_? What
resemblance can possibly be established between a vessel of war, which
comes to pour fire, shot, and devastation into our cities, and a
merchant ship, which comes to offer to barter with us freely,
voluntarily, commodity for commodity?

As much may be said of the word _inundation_. This word is generally
taken in bad part, because _inundations_ often ravage fields and
crops. If, however, they deposit upon the soil a greater value than
that which they take from it; as is the case in the inundations of the
Nile, we might bless and deify them as the Egyptians do. Well! before
declaiming against the inundation of foreign produces, before
opposing to them restraining and costly obstacles, let us inquire if
they are the inundations which ravage or those which fertilize? What
should we think of Mehemet Ali, if, instead of building, at great
expense, dams across the Nile for the purpose of extending its field
of inundation, he should expend his money in digging for it a deeper
bed, so that Egypt should not be defiled by this _foreign_ slime,
brought down from the Mountains of the Moon? We exhibit precisely the
same amount of reason, when we wish, by the expenditure of millions,
to preserve our country--From what? The advantages with which Nature
has endowed other climates.

Among the metaphors which conceal an injurious theory, none is more
common than that embodied in the words _tribute, tributary_.

These words are so much used that they have become synonymous with the
words _purchase, purchaser_, and one is used indifferently for the
other.

Yet a _tribute_ or _tax_ differs as much from _purchase_ as a theft
from an exchange, and we should like quite as well to hear it said,
"Dick Turpin has broken open my safe, and has _purchased_ ou