CHAPTER XVIII.
THERE ARE NO ABSOLUTE PRINCIPLES.
We cannot be too much astonished at the facility with which men resign
themselves to be ignorant of what is most important for them to know,
and we may feel sure that they have decided to go to sleep in their
ignorance when they have brought themselves to proclaim this axiom:
There are no absolute principles.
Enter the Halls of Congress. The question under discussion is whether
the law shall interdict or allow international exchanges.
Mr. C****** rises and says:
"If you tolerate these exchanges, the foreigner will inundate you with
his products, the English with cotton and iron goods, the Nova-Scotian
with coal, the Spaniard with wool, the Italian with silk, the Canadian
with cattle, the Swede with iron, the Newfoundlander with salt-fish.
Industrial pursuits will thus be destroyed."
Mr. G***** replies:
"If you prohibit these exchanges, the varied benefits which nature has
lavished on different climates will be, to you, as though they were
not. You will not participate in the mechanical skill of the English,
nor in the riches of the Nova-Scotian mines, in the abundance of
Canadian pasturage, in the cheapness of Spanish labor, in the fervor
of the Italian climate; and you will be obliged to ask through a
forced production that which you might by exchange have obtained
through a readier production.
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