This being a fixed law of nature, evidently intended to check the growth of old states, and promote the extension of mankind in the uncultivated parts of the earth, it is in vain to contend against it. So violently does free-trade displace industry on both sides, where it is fully established, that it is scarcely possible to conceive that two nations should at the same time run into the same glaring mistake; and thence the common complaint that no benefit is gained, but an infinite loss sustained, by its establishment in any one country, and that reciprocity is on one side only. As no adequate exchange of manufactures for subsistence is thus to be looked for, there must arise, in the old state, a constant exportation of the precious metals, attended by frequent commercial crises, and a constant increase in the weight of direct taxation. Should it prove otherwise, and two nations both go into the same system, it could lead to no other result but the stoppage of the growth of civilisation in the young one, and the destruction of national independence in the old. The former would never succeed in establishing commerce or manufactures, from the competition of the steam-engine in its aged neighbour; the latter would become dependent for subsistence on the plough of the young one. The rising agricultural state would be chained for ever to the condition of the serfs in Poland, or the boors in America; the stationary commercial state would fall into the degrading dependence of ancient Rome on the harvests of Egypt and Lybia.