"Now, the liquid the employment of which produced this speedy effect was nothing but water, without any special properties, and without any relation or appropriateness to the disease which it overcame; and which, besides, if it had possessed any such qualities, would long before have produced the effect through the daily use which the patient made of it for drinking and washing. "This cure cannot, then, be ascribed to the natural efficacy of the Massabielle water, and all the circumstances, as it would seem--namely, the tenacity and activity of the eruption, the rapidity of the cure, and the inappropriateness of the element which brought it about--concur to show in it a cause foreign and superior to natural agents."--_Extract from the 15th procès-verbal of the commission._ [14] Ninth procès-verbal of the commission. OUR NORTHERN NEIGHBORS. In the adjustment of differences to which conflicting interests or a spirit of rivalry may give birth, governments, like individuals, are prone to satisfy themselves with conventions limited to matters immediately in dispute. They are like medical doctors, who treat symptoms as the malady to be cured, and, satisfied with alleviating present pain, leave its causes to war against mortal life, until disease becomes chronic and incurable. Whether the labors of the Joint High Commission, now sitting in Washington, will be of this description, remains to be seen; but such, it appears to us, has been the character of treaties or conventions affecting commercial relations with our Canadian and provincial neighbors. They seem not to have been founded upon any intelligent consideration of the wants of contracting parties, but, presupposing that there must be conflicting interests, are devised to prevent rival industries from merging in unfriendliness and strife. We ask, then, whether these rival interests have legitimate existence. The answer to this question will be derived from an examination of the statistics of the two countries--their agricultural and other products--their climatic and social conditions, and the commercial relations actually subsisting between them, as well as those which both sustain to other countries and peoples. The productions of a country are properly classified according to the sources whence they are derived. We have, then, five distinct classes of products, namely: The natural productions of the sea, the earth, the forest, and the results of industry applied to agriculture and manufactures.