(b) _There were two desires_, Solomon's desire for cedar-timbers to build the temple with, and Hiram's desire for wheat and oil with which to support the people of his sterile kingdom. "_So Hiram gave Solomon cedar-trees and fir-trees according to all his desire: and Solomon gave Hiram twenty thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty measures of pure oil._" The desire of each party was personal and peculiar, known at first only to himself, but upon occasion became directed towards something in the possession of the other, and each at length became aware of the desire of the other, and also of his own ability to satisfy the want of the other. If Solomon could have satisfied his desire for timber by his own or his subjects' efforts directly, this trade would never have taken place; if Hiram or his subjects could have gotten the wheat and oil directly out of their narrow and sandy strips of sea-coast, this trade would not have taken place; and so there must be in every case of trade not only two desires each springing from a separate person, but also each person must have in his possession something fitted to gratify the desire of the other person, and each be willing to yield that something into the possession of the other for the sake of receiving from him that which will satisfy his own desire, and so both desires be satisfied indirectly. Here is the deep and perennial source of exchanges. Men's desires are so many and various, and so constantly becoming more numerous and miscellaneous, and so extremely few of his own wants can ever be met by any one man directly, that the foundation of exchanges, and of a perpetually increasing volume of exchanges, is laid in the deep places of human hearts, namely, in Desires ever welling up to the surface and demanding their satisfaction through an easy and natural interaction with the ever swelling Desires of other men. Here too is a firm foundation (a chief foundation) of human Society. Reciprocal wants, which can only be met through exchanges, draw men together locally and bind them together socially, in hamlets and towns and cities and States and Nations, and also knit ties scarcely less strong and beneficent between the separate and remotest nationalities of the earth. It is certain that an inland commercial route connected the East of Asia with the West of Europe centuries before Christ, and that a traffic was maintained on the frontier of China between the Sina and the Scythians, in the manner still followed by the Chinese and the Russians at _Kiachta_. The Sina had an independent position in Western China as early as the eighth century before Christ, and five centuries later established their sway under the dynasty of Tsin (whence our word "China") over the whole of the empire. The prophet Isaiah exclaims (xlix, 12), "Behold! these shall come from far; and behold! these from the North and from the West; _and these from the land of