If a nation had foreign commerce, and some of its citizens found the carrying trade an advantageous employment for their labor and capital as compared with other possible industries in the country, it would not follow that some other citizens of that country ought to engage in ship-building. It is no object to build ships, but only to get such ships as are wanted, in the most advantageous manner. If a man should refuse to carry on a carting business unless he could make his own wagons, it would be such a reflection on his good sense that his business credit would be very low. If some Americans could buy and sail ships so as to make profits, what is the sense of saying that they shall not do it because some other Americans cannot build ships at a profit? Only one answer to this question has ever been offered by anybody, and that is the prediction that, some day, if we go without ships long enough, we shall, by the mere process of going without, begin to get some--a prediction for which the prophets give no guarantee, in addition to their personal authority, save the fact that we have fewer ships and worse ones every year. I have said above that, if there were no restraints or interferences, we should simply notice whether any Americans took to the carrying trade or not, and should thence infer that they might or might not be better employed in some other industry. It is impossible, now, to say whether, if all restrictions were removed, the carrying trade or ship-building would be a profitable industry in the United States or not. Any opinion given by anybody on that point is purely speculative. The present state of the iron and steel industries, and of the manufacture of engines and machinery, is so artificial that no one can judge what would be the possibilities of those industries under an entirely different state of things. It is, however, just because the present state of things prevents a free trial that it is indefensible; we are working in the dark and on speculation all the time and have none of the natural and proper tests and guarantees for what we are doing. We are controlled by the predictions of prophets, the notions of dogmatizers, the crude errors of superficial students of history, the wrong-headed inferences of shallow observers, and the selfish machinations of interested persons. We can distinguish many forces which are at work on our ship-building and on our carrying trade, but none of them are genuine or respectable. We are submitting to restraints and losses, and we have no guarantee whatever that we shall ever win any compensation. The teaching of economic science is distinctly that we never shall win any. We are expending capital without any measurement or adjustment of the _quid pro quo_; we are spending without calculation, and receiving something or nothing--we do not know which. The wrong of all this is not in the assumption that we have not certain industries which we would have (for we cannot