But, nevertheless, this system involved a fatal mistake, the pernicious effects of which have now been amply demonstrated by experience, and which lies at the bottom of the whole modern doctrines of free trade. _It stipulates for no advantages corresponding to the concession made_, and thus the reciprocity was on one side only. Mr Huskisson repealed, in favour of the Baltic powers, the British navigation laws; that is, he threw open to Baltic competition, without any protection, the British shipping interest: but _he forgot to exact from them any corresponding favour for British iron or cotton goods in the Baltic harbours_. He said--"We will admit your shipping on the same terms on which you admit ours." What he should have said is--"We will admit your shipping into our harbors on the same term you admit _our cotton goods_ into your harbours." This would have been real reciprocity, because each side would have given free ingress to that staple commodity in which its neighbor had the advantage; and thus the most important branch of industry of each would have been secured an inlet into the other's territories. The British tonnage might have been driven out of the Baltic trade by the shipowners of Denmark and Norway, but the Prussian cotton manufacturers would have been crushed by the British. It might then have come to be a question of whether the upholding of our shipping interest or the extension of our cotton manufactures was the most advisable policy. But no such question need be considered now. We have gained nothing by exposing our shipping interest to the ruinous competition of the Baltic vessels. The Danish, Norwegian and Prussian ships have come into our harbours, but the British cotton and iron goods have not entered theirs. The reciprocity system has been all on one side. After having been twenty years in operation, it has failed in producing _the smallest concession_ in favour of British manufactures, or producing in those states with whom the reciprocity treaties were concluded, the _smallest extension of British exports_. Since we so kindly permitted it, they have taken every thing and given nothing. They have done worse. They have taken good and returned evil. The vast concession contained in the repeal of our navigation laws, has been answered by the enhanced duties contained in the Prussian Zollverein. Twenty-six millions of Germans have been arrayed under a commercial league, which, by levying duties, practically varying from thirty to fifty, though nominally only ten _per cent_, effectually excludes British manufactures; and, after twenty years' experience, our exports are only a few hundred thousands a year, and our exports of cotton manufactures _only a few hundreds a year_, to the whole States of Northern Europe, in favour of whom the navigation laws were swept away, and an irreparable wound inflicted on British maritime interests, and in whose wants Mr Huskisson