f free commerce was to do away
with the effects of five centuries of disputes and warfare. England was
to forget the part which France took in the first American war, and
France was to cease to recollect that there had been such days as Crecy
and Agincourt, Vittoria and Waterloo; and also that England had
overthrown her rule in North America, and driven her people from India.
But it was not France and England only that were to enter within the
charmed circle; all nations were to be admitted into it, and the whole
world was to fraternize. It was to be Arcadia in a ring-fence, an
Arcadia solidly based upon heavy profits, with consols, _rentes_, and
other public securities--which in other times had a bad fashion of
becoming very insecure--always at a good premium. Quarter-day was to be
the day for which all other days were made, and it would never be
darkened by the imposition of new taxes, by repudiation, or by any other
of those things that so often have lessened the felicity of the
fund-holder.

That the new Temple of Peace might be enabled to rise in proper
proportions, it became necessary to destroy some old edifices, and to
remove what was considered to be very rubbishy rubbish. Protection,
tariffs, and so forth, once worshiped as evidences of ancestral wisdom,
were to be got rid of with all possible speed, and free trade was to be
substituted, that is, trade as free as was compatible with the raising
of enormous revenues, made necessary by the foolish wars of the past. In
due time, perfect freedom of trade would be had; but a blessing of that
magnitude could not be expected to come at once to the relief of a
suffering world. England, which had taken the lead in supporting
protection, and whose commercial system had been of the most illiberal
and sordid character, became the leader in the grand reform, pushing the
work vigorously forward, and, with her usual consideration for the
feelings and rights of others, ordering the nations of Europe and
America to follow her example. She had discovered that she had been all
in the wrong since the day when Oliver St. John's wounded pride led him
to the conclusion that it was the duty of every patriotic Englishman to
do his best to destroy the commerce of Holland. She was very impatient
of those peoples who were shy of imitating her, forgetting that her
conduct through six generations had made a strong impression on the
world's mind, and that her sudden conversion could not imm