"I never gave worse advice, sir, than when I recommended you to keep quiet, and let matters take their course. Innocent as you are proved to have been all this time, I hope you would have disregarded my advice, if our riotous neighbours had not compelled you to throw it behind you. I thought I was giving you the most friendly counsel, sir; for, to say the truth, I thought,--without having a bad opinion of you, either,--that you had most probably been involved as these gentlemen said you were." "Without having a bad opinion of me! How could that be?" "Why, sir, when one considers how long our prohibitive laws have been evaded by all classes of people in turn,--so that the bad were not held to be the worse for such practices, and they were considered no stain upon the good,--it seemed natural enough that, if your interest tempted you particularly, you should continue the contraband trade when other people were thinking to have done with it." "In declaring that I might violate public loyalty and private faith in one set of circumstances, without being a bad man," said M. Gaubion, "it seems to me that you pass the severest of censures on the power which framed those circumstances." "I have no objection, sir, to having my words considered in that light. The business of governments is to guard the freedom of commerce, and not to interfere with it. If they choose to show partiality, and to meddle with affairs which they cannot properly control, they become answerable for the sin of disobedience which is sure to arise, and for all the mischiefs that follow in its train. If, moreover, governments take up any wrong notion,--such as that which has caused us a world of woe,--that the benefits of commerce arise from what is exported rather than from what is imported,--if such a notion is taken up, and obstinately acted upon, long after the bulk of the people know better, the ruling powers are responsible for all the consequences that visit themselves and the subjects whom they have afflicted, either by commercial misfortunes or by legal punishments." "Then you consider your ancient governments (less liberal and enlightened than the present) answerable alike for my guilt, if I had smuggled, and for my troubles under the suspicion of having smuggled?" "Just so; and for more within my little circle of observation than I should like to have to bear my share of." "For the late prosperity of Breme and his brother,--prosperity of which the neighbours were jealous because it arose from amidst the destitution of a host of native weavers?"