It is disadvantageous as impairing the resources of the dependency, which are a part of the resources of the empire, and the very material of the trade which is the object of desire. If a colony is forbidden to buy of any but the mother-country, it must do without some articles which it desires, or pay dear for them;—it loses the opportunity of an advantageous exchange, or makes a disadvantageous one. Thus the resources of the colony are wasted. If a colony is forbidden to sell its own produce to any but the mother-country, either the prohibition is not needed, or the colony receives less in exchange from the mother-country than it might obtain elsewhere. Thus, again, the resources of the colony are wasted. If a colony is forbidden either to buy of or sell to any but the mother-country, the resources of the colony are wasted according to both the above methods, and the colony is condemned to remain a poor customer and an expensive dependency. In proportion, therefore, as trade with colonies is distinguished from trade with other places, by restrictions on buyers at home, or on sellers in the colonies, that trade (involving the apparatus of restriction) becomes an occasion of loss instead of gain to the empire. If restrictive interference be impolitic,—oppressive,—impious, between empire and empire, it becomes absolutely monstrous when introduced among the different classes of the same country. The magistrates of a grazing county would do ill to prohibit intercourse with the manufacturing, and agricultural, and mining districts around; but much more oppressive and fatal would be the policy of a city corporation which should make the resources of the city depend on the will of the corn-dealers which it contained.—Such has been the policy of the rulers of Britain; and side by side with this restriction of the supply of food,—this abuse of capital,—may be placed the curious perversion of labour which is caused not only by the forcing of agriculture at the expense of manufactures, but by the existence of exclusive and injurious privileges to trading corporations, of certain ancient laws respecting apprenticeship, and of the iniquitous practice of the impressment of seamen.