Far from being injurious to the economic development of the United States, it seemed as if Protection had really helped it. What it actually did was to quicken by the space of a few years an evolution which nature herself was one day bound to accomplish. So vast was the territory, so abundant the natural resources, and so advantageously were they placed for the application of human energy that no system, however defective, could long have delayed the accumulation of wealth. The similar condition of Germany lent colour to the belief that the same experiment carried on under similar circumstances would also succeed there. Accordingly, List’s work, though not directly connected with any known American system, is the first treatise which gives a clear indication of the influence upon European thought of the economic experiences of the New World. In a beautiful paragraph in the _National System_ List has himself confessed to this. “When afterwards I visited the United States, I cast all books aside—they would only have tended to mislead me. The best work on political economy which one can read in that modern land is actual life. There one may see wildernesses grow into rich and mighty states; and progress which requires centuries in Europe goes on there before one’s eyes, viz. that from the condition of the mere hunter to the rearing of cattle, from that to agriculture, and from the latter to manufactures and commerce. There one may see how rents increase by degrees from nothing to important revenues. There the simple peasant knows practically far better than the most acute savants of the Old World how agriculture and rents can be improved; he endeavours to attract manufacturers and artificers to his vicinity. Nowhere so well as there can one learn the importance of means of transport, and their effect on the mental and material life of the people. That book of actual life I have earnestly and diligently studied, and compared with the results of my previous studies, experience, and reflections.”[597]