And hence, as we see, although the wealth of America as a whole is increased by the freedom of trade which exists between its component States, this wealth, far from diffusing itself evenly, like our liquid manure, over the whole field, - as the Free Traders imagine, - heaps itself up, on the contrary, in great piles and masses at certain geographical points, - New York, Chicago, Pittsburg, St. Louis, and the rest; the consequence being not only that the particular States in which these and other cities are situated are the richest in the Union, but that the others, especially in the remoter and less favoured regions, have had their industries so drained away, that they are relatively poorer than they were before. It is precisely the same as when a railway is being carried through a new territory; - the towns and villages on its route draw capital and population away from the surrounding districts, until when in its course it reaches some still more favoured point for business, it concentrates there in turn all available capital and population, leaving the rest behind it as poor, if not poorer, than before.

It was the same when the iron and coal works of the South of England, and the manufactures of the Eastern and Western Counties took wing, and migrated to the Midlands and the North, to the sites of richer natural productions, or to more accessible centres of transport and trade, - and so made the fortunes of Leeds, Manchester, Birmingham, Sheffield, Middlesbrough, and the rest; and while enriching the counties in which these cities and towns are situated, left those from which they had migrated, bereft of capital and population, to their meadows and sheep walks as before.

Now, the same relationship holds between the economic interests of the world as a whole and those of any particular nation in it. There is no way to insure that the two will be identical, and that what is best for the world as a whole will be best for each particular nation; and the more free and unrestrained the trade between nations becomes, the more difficult will this be to effect, until with absolute and universal free trade there is neither security nor guarantee for it at all. It can neither be done, as Adam Smith so confidently and naively enjoins, by each nation following the particular order and hierarchy of investments which he lays down, beginning with Agriculture at the top; nor can it be done, as the modern Free Trader enjoins, by allowing each nation to invest its capital as it pleases, - whether in agriculture, manufactures, the home or foreign trade, matters not, - on the ground that each may be trusted to know its own interest best, and that where trade is everywhere free, what is best for all the nations collectively will necessarily be the best for each individually. And the reason, again, is obvious.

For exchange to be beneficial to each of the parties to a bargain, and therefore fruitful and beneficent all round, it is essential that the products exchanged in each case should, like the sexes, be complementary to each other and of different kinds, - as corn for wine, wine for manufactures, manufactures for tobacco, or spices, or furs, or what not; whereas, on the contrary, when products of the same kind are allowed by Free Trade to meet and confront each other in the same market, like rival gladiators in the same arena, they neutralize and extinguish each other by their competition, until only those which are supreme, each in its own kind, are left victors on the field. These in turn pair with each other, as it were, as complementary exchanges, like the finest types of manliness on the one hand, and beauty on the other, among the partners in a ball-room, and so secure the cream; while the less favoured on either side have to content themselves with the smaller markets, the hole-and-corner businesses, and like defeated stags and withered does, betake themselves to the leavings on the outskirts of the industrial field.

Or to sum it up; - the reason that absolute Free Trade if made universal would be best for the world as a single economic whole is that it would offer the fewest barriers to those complementary exchanges of different products in which the very essence and raison d'etre of all fruitful exchange consists; and especially because being co-extensive with the whole world, every quality, form, degree, grade, or variety of natural product or manufactured article which can be grown or produced in any nook and corner of it, - with its infinite varieties of soil, its profusion of animal and vegetable life, the special talents, natural or acquired, peculiar to its races and peoples, - can, when set afloat on the stream of circulation, find a larger market for itself with the whole world open to it, than it possibly could if by tariff barriers its market was confined to its own particular national territory alone; in the same way as in the human body, where it is seen that of all the varied food products that are eaten, none is so poor and useless but when thrown into the circulatory blood stream it will always find some part of the organism to take it up and utilise it, even if it were only used for the growth of the hairs or nails; whereas if forced to confine itself to this or that particular organ by reason of barriers in the general circulation, much of the food that was apportioned to any particular organ could not be utilised by it, and so most of what was eaten would be wasted and thrown out as valueless excreta.