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 [123] 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."
Assuredly, one of the senators deceives himself. But which? It is well worth while to ascertain; for we are not dealing with opinions only. You stand at the entrance of two roads; you must choose; one of them leads necessarily to misery.
To escape from this embarrassment it is said: There are no absolute principles.
This axiom, so much in vogue in our day, not only serves laziness, it is also in accord with ambition.
If the theory of prohibition should prevail, or again, if the doctrine of liberty should triumph, a very small amount of law would suffice for our economic code. In the first case it would stand—All foreign exchange is forbidden; in the second, All exchange with abroad is free, and many great personages would lose their importance.
But if exchange has not a nature proper to itself; if it is governed by no natural law; if it is capriciously useful or injurious; if it does not find its spring in the good it accomplishes, its limit when it ceases to do good; if its effects cannot be appreciated by those who execute them; in one word, if there are no absolute principles, we are compelled to measure, weigh, regulate transactions, to equalize the conditions of labor, to look for the level of profits—colossal task, well suited to give great entertainments, and high influence to those who undertake it.
Here in New York are a million of human beings [124] who would all die within a few days, if the abundant provisioning of nature were not flowing towards this great metropolis.
Imagination takes fright in the effort to appreciate the immense multiplicity of articles which must cross the Bay, the Hudson, the Harlem, and the East rivers, to-morrow, if the lives of its inhabitants are not to become the prey of famine, riot, and pillage. Yet, as we write, all are sleeping; and their quiet slumbers are not disturbed for a moment by the thought of so frightful a perspective. On the other hand, forty-five States and Territories have worked to-day, without concert, without mutual understanding, to provision New York. How is it that every day brings in what is needed, neither more nor less, to this gigantic market? What is the intelligent and secret power which presides over the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated—a regularity in which each one has a faith so undoubting, though comfort and life are at stake.
This power is an absolute principle, the principle of freedom of operation, the principle of free conduct.
We have faith in that innate light which Providence has placed in the hearts of all men, to which he has confided the preservation and improvement of our race-interest (since we must call it by its name), which is so active, so vigilant, so provident, when its action is free. What would become of you, inhabitants of New York, if a Congressional majority should take a fancy to substitute for this power the combinations of their genius, however superior it may be supposed to be; if they imagined they could submit this prodigious mechanism to its supreme direction, unite all its resources [125] in their own hands, and decide when, where, how, and on what conditions everything should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? Ah! though there may be much suffering within your bounds, though misery, despair, and perhaps hungry exhaustion may cause more tears to flow than your ardent charity can dry, it is probable, it is certain, we dare to affirm, that the arbitrary intervention of government would multiply these sufferings infinitely, and would extend to you all, those evils which at present are confined to a small portion of your number.
We all have faith in this principle where our internal transactions are concerned; why should we not have faith in the same principle applied to our international operations, which are, assuredly, less numerous, less delicate, and less complicated. And if it is not necessary that the Mayor and Common Council of New York should regulate our industries, weigh our change, our profits, and our losses, occupy themselves with the regulation of prices, equalize the conditions of our labor in internal commerce—why is it necessary that the custom-house, proceeding on its fiscal mission, should pretend to exercise protective action upon our exterior commerce?