ourselves, the difference in price is a _gratuitous gift_ conferred
upon us; and the gift is more or less considerable, according as the
difference is greater or less. It is the quarter, the half, or the
three-quarters of the value of the produce, in proportion as the
foreign merchant requires the three-quarters, the half, or the
quarter of the price. It is as complete as possible when the producer
offers, as the sun does with light, the whole, in free gift. The
question is, and we put it formally, whether you wish for the United
States the benefit of gratuitous consumption, or the supposed
advantages of laborious production. Choose: but be consistent. And
does it not argue the greatest inconsistency to check, as you do, the
importation of iron-ware, dry-goods, and other foreign manufactures,
merely because, and even in proportion as, their price approaches
zero, while at the same time you freely admit, and without limitation,
the light of the sun, whose price is during the whole day _at_ zero?"




CHAPTER VIII.

DISCRIMINATING DUTIES.


A poor laborer of Ohio had raised, with the greatest possible
care and attention, a nursery of vines, from which, after much labor,
he at last succeeded in producing a pipe of Catawba wine, and forgot,
in the joy of his success, that each drop of this precious nectar had
cost a drop of sweat to his brow.