What is
more singular, it has remained so till lately, despite anathemas and
contempt, and despite the discoveries of the modern school. This
system, which our writers have called the _mercantile system_,
consists in opposing, by prohibitions and duties, such foreign
productions as might ruin our manufacturers by their competition. This
system has been pronounced futile, absurd, capable of ruining any
country, by economical writers of all schools. It has been banished
from all books, reduced to take refuge in the practice of every
people; and we do not understand why, in regard to the wealth of
nations, governments should not have yielded themselves to wise
authors rather than to _the old experience_ of a system. Above all, we
cannot conceive why, in political economy, the American government
should persist in resisting the progress of light, and in preserving,
in its practice, those old errors which all our economists of the pen
have designated. But we have said too much about this mercantile
system, which has in its favor _facts_ alone, though sustained by
scarcely a single writer of the day.
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