the more profitable is the exchange to both. This is a point of considerable consequence, and will repay some pains in illustration. If the blacksmith can shoe horses only a little better than the tailor could shoe them, and the tailor make coats only a little better than the blacksmith could make them, there will be only a slight advantage in their mutually exchanging efforts. For the sake of definiteness, let us say, that the tailor's capacity in making coats is 6, and his capacity in shoeing horses is 5; and the blacksmith's capacity in shoeing horses is 6, and his capacity in making coats is 5. Each has a relative superiority to the other of 1, and if they exchange, there is an advantage of 2 to be divided between them. Now let us suppose that each, by exclusive devotion to his own trade, by developing his latent skill and ingenuity, and by availing himself of all the forces of nature at his command, comes to have a capacity in his own business of 15, his capacity in the other business remaining as before at 5. Each now has a relative superiority to the other of 10, and when they exchange there is an advantage of 20 to be divided between them. The motive to an exchange, and the gain of an exchange, are ten times greater than they were before. Therefore we lay down the principle, as universally applicable to all exchanges, that the greater the relative superiority at different points, the more profitable do exchanges become. If this principle is just, and I flatter myself that it will be found to be just, it follows, that every. man who has anything to exchange, is directly interested in the success of his fellow-citizens, that every trade finds its advantage in the increasing develop

ment of other trades, and that all discoveries and inventions by which Nature is made to pay tribute to any art is, restrictions apart, so much clear gain to the world at large. In the light of sound principles, what has been sometimes called the jealousy of trade is simply silly.

All exchange, then, depends on difference of relative advantage, because without some difference of relative advantage, each party could serve himself directly just as well as he could be served by the other party, and there would be no motive at all for an exchange. As soon as there is any difference of relative advantage, there begins to be a motive for an exchange, and a gain as the result; and the motive and the gain become stronger and greater as the dif. ference increases; so that the gains of exchange are the greatest in that state of society in which the freest opportunity is allowed to every individual to employ his peculiar powers in work for which he is best fitted, in which desires are so various and employments so diversified as to give a chance for all kinds of efforts, and in which men avail themselves to the utmost of those natural advantages and gratuitous powers which lie open to their disposal. Freedom, association, and invention, are the three things which make exchanges as profitable as they can become, and which will carry society, so far as exchanges can do it, to the highest pitch of prosperity. Of these by far the most important is freedom, because, where freedom is conceded, association and invention follow in time by laws of natural sequence.. By freedom is meant the right of every man to employ his own efforts for the gratification of his own

Each

wants, either directly or through exchange. man's right of freedom is limited of course by every other man's right of freedom which he is not at liberty to infringe; and also, in certain respects, by what is called the general good, of which the judge must be the government under which he lives. Under these limitations, which limit in common all other rights, the right of exchange is just as much of a right as the right of breathing. It stands on the same unassailable ground. Every man has a natural, self evident, and inalienable right to put forth efforts for his own well-being; and whenever two men find that by exchanging efforts with each other, they can better promote their own happiness, they have an indisputable right, subject only to the above limitations, to exchange; and it is a high-handed infringement of natural rights, a blow aimed at the life and source of property, when any authority whatever interferes to restrict or prohibit the freedom of exchange, except that act be justified by a solid proof that other private or public rights which are as well based as the right of exchange are infringed thereby.

Happily, since governments have become more enlightened than formerly, they perceive for the most part that they have no right to interfere with this natural right of their people, and also, that, by interfering with it, they would do them an incalculable injury. The only motive to a mutual exchange of services, is always and everywhere the mutual benefit of the parties. After every fair exchange, each party is richer than before, has more satisfactions, otherwise there would be no exchange. I esteem the service

I receive more highly than the erwise I should not render it.

service I render, othThe man to whom I

render it esteems that service more highly than the service he renders to me. We are both gainers. And since almost everybody in every community has something to exchange,- either service or commodity, and nobody exchanges except in view of a gain, it is clear that free exchange benefits everybody, and harms nobody. Moreover, under a system of free exchange, every man is allowed, under the stimulus of self interest, to follow the bent of his own mind, to work away at those obstacles to the gratification of human desires which he feels himself best able to overcome, and to avail himself of all those helps in his work, of which Nature offers to him a full store. Under these circumstances, obsta cles give way in all directions: the amount of material products produced and offered for exchange is vastly augmented; the number and variety and excellence of 'the services proffered is indefinitely increased; the diversified and rapidly increasing desires in such a community are readily met by exchange; all peculiar facilities are taken advantage of, and the difference of relative advantage becomes great in all directions, and a new day of industrial and commercial prosperity is ushered in. Under freedom all men have the greatest possible motive to produce, because they can dispose of their efforts to the best advantage. They can purchase with these efforts what they will, and when they will, and where they will. Thus freedom leads to extended association, and, speedily also, to the invention of machinery and all labor-saving appliances. There

fore, since free exchange indefinitely multiplies, in number and variety, the services which men may render to each other; since, by means of it, men's satisfactions bear a larger and larger proportion to their efforts; and since the only possible motive to an exchange is a mutual benefit of the parties, no reason can be given, no good reason ever has been given, why exchanges should not be the freest possible.

After long centuries of meddlesome and vexatious interference with the freedom of industry and the rights of exchange, by limiting the number of apprentices to each artisan, by dictating what should and what should not be manufactured or grown, by attempting to determine what should and what should not be imported and exported, and by arbitrary burdens on certain classes, and arbitrary privileges granted to others, the more enlightened nations of the world have come at length to perceive that wealth and power and progress are' dependent on free exchange, at least within their own boundaries. Common sense reigns now, for the most part, in this thing, within the limits of the individual nations. When Bonaparte brought half of Western Europe under French dominion, the previously existing custom-houses and toll barriers of the interior fell as by a stroke, and free trade became the rule between French, Dutch, Germans, Italians, and Spaniards, all who were subject to his sway. But when his vast empire was dissolved into its original independent kingdoms, up shot the custom-houses again, around all the petty frontiers, and each State was