This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1877 edition. Excerpt: ... THE DANGERS OF A WAR OF COMMERCE AND THE NECESSITY OF A TAEIFF AND OF AN UNFLUCTUATING CURRENCY TO NATIONAL PROSPERITY. "The experience of nearly eighty-one years has taught me that the greatest and most important question that now demands the consideration of the American people is, whether we, as a nation, are willing to know the truth, and let the truth make and maintain our freedom, or whether we have deliberately determined to follow the advice of men and nations that have a direct and an immediate interest to mislead and deceive us. For we may rest assured that all trade between foreign nations and our own is a kind of commercial war. It is a war of interests, as all nations are using their highest arts to buy as cheap and sell as dear as they can. All are trying to buy their raw materials in the cheapest market, and to sell their manufactured labor for the most that can be obtained for it. This they are doing by the use of all the arts, both fair and foul, that human ingenuity can devise. "There has been nothing comparable with the evils that have and may result to nations from a war of commerce. Invasion of armies is attended with waste of property, destruction of life, and suspension of all fair exchange of the products of labor; but, with the return of peace, men can again combine their efforts, and in a few years all is as it had been before. Such, however, is not the case with the substitution of foreign trade, for the home commerce of the products of our own land and labor. Under the artful and alluring fascinations of the powers of foreign trade, association for mutual benefit dies away; intellect declines, and the life's blood of a nation slowly ebbs away, rendering recovery from day to day more difficult, and closing...