New-York daily tribune. [volume] (New-York [N.Y.]) 1842-1866, 1852-05-25

merely to make the treaties above indie ated,
but at once TO establish line Of steamers
from some Southern port of the Union to
Para, in Brazil, touching at Porto Rico
and some of the other West India Islands.
Other measures he hints at as being in re-
serve; these, ne regards as the first step
toward the great end he has in view.
And now for brief word on the other
aspects of the question.
In the first place, the great wealth which
European nations have acquired In the On
entail trade, has been gained at the expense
of tie peoples with which it has been car
ried on. 1.-THE former have been enriched,
the latter have been plundered, ruined, and
exhausted. Look at India under British
supremacy-its native industry utterly de-
stroyed, its people ground to the dust oy
taxation, reduced to state of precarious
dependence unequaled under their former
tyrants, dying of famine by thousands on
thousands whenever there is short cropot
rice, and the Government now actually ex-
listing on the power of selling opium to Chi
ma Is that sort of commerce which MIR.
Maury would like to have his country en-
gage in! Is that way of making for
tunes which he would have US initiate
THE foundations of commerce, says
the memorial, crest on diversity Of CHI
mate, for without diversity of climate
there can be no diversity of productions"
Wrong again: the foundations ofcommerce
rest on the division of labor, the diversity
of occupations, the density of population
the freedom of political institutions, and
the wisdom of legislation. Where these ex-
ist there is great deal Of commerce, and 1t
is active and constantly increasing through
the progress of invention, the retinements OF
taste, and the augmentation of the power to
purchase. That part of the worlds COM
merce which is based on these is infinitely
greater than that based on differences o. CHI
mate. Besides, science is constantly abro-
grating these differences. We already pro-
duce sugar in the temperate zone at rate
so cheap, that when another year shall
have removed the duty which now gives
cane sugar an advantage in the English
market, the Continental producers of beet
sugar expect to compete there with the
tropical article. See what a proportion Of
the coffee drunk in England is chicory,
plant of native growth. Cotton, too, is on
the eve of losing its importance by the new
processes of preparing flax. And so it is
in other particulars science is perpetually
rendering man independent of the accidents
of nature in respect to climate as well as
otherwise.
There has never been more pernicious
fallacy in commercial legislation than that
which Mr.. Maury INDUCES in, namely, the
elevation in Importance of the distant trade
above the home trade. The latter is i'm
measurably the more necessary the more
useful, the more profitable and the more
slim ulating to national progress OF the two.
The former ought to be merely its append
age. 1t is true that its greatness, being all
seen and comprehended together more i'm
presses the imagination. But those ex-
changes of services which are carried on in
the family, in the neighborhood, in the
town, and which are performed with the
simplest machinery, the greatest economy
and the most immediate utility, are of in
6nitely more consequence to human wei
fare and national power than all the for
eign traffic of the universe, carried on as
it must be with complex machinery, at
great expense and with remote returns.
These are simple truisms, but they are
neglected by Mr.. Maury in his ardent dis
QUESTION. Forgetful that it is the little
rills flowing through each mans garden
and keeping green and fresh every meadow;
that impart fertility and joy to the earth,
and not the big rivers-and that the latter
flow only that their waters may return to
replenish the former, he suffers himself to
be so far misled by his fancies as to this
distant traffic with country yet mainly
wilderness, as to pronounce it the great
est commercial question of the day"
The truth is, as Adam Smith affirms
that the nation which devotes its energies
to the distant trade, to the neglect of the
home trade, strikes blow at its own life.
1t may gain power for time, but it must
be by the Impeachment of its neighbors,
and at the imminent peril of its own fu-
L.