86. If we turn back once more to our own case, we note the rise in 1883–1884 of the policy of commercial treaties and of a “vigorous foreign policy.” For years a “national policy” for us has meant “securing the home market.” The perfection of this policy has led to isolation and ostentatious withdrawal from cosmopolitan interests. I may say that I do not write out of any sympathy with vague humanitarianism or cosmopolitan sentiments. It seems to me that local groupings have great natural strength and obvious utility so long as they are subdivisions of a higher organization of the human race, or so long as they are formed freely and their relations to each other are developed naturally. But now suddenly rises a clap-trap demand for a “national policy,” which means that we shall force our way out of our tax-created isolation by diplomacy or war. The effort, however, is to be restrained carefully and arbitrarily to the western hemisphere, and we have anxiously disavowed any part or lot in the regulation of the Congo, although we shall certainly some day desire to take our share in the trade of that district. Our statesmen, however, if they are going to let us have any foreign trade, cannot bear to let us go and take it where we shall make most by it. They must draw _a priori_ lines for it. They have taxed us in order to shut us up at home. This has killed the carrying trade, for, if we decided not to trade, what could the shippers find to do? Next ship-building perished, for if there was no carrying trade why build ships, especially when the taxes to protect manufactures were crushing ships and commerce? (§ 101.) Next the navy declined, for with no commerce to protect at sea, we need no navy. Next we lost the interest which we took thirty years ago in a canal across the isthmus, because we have now, under the no-trade policy, no use for it. Next diplomacy became a sinecure, for we have no foreign relations. 87. Now comes the “national policy,” not because it is needed, but as an artificial and inflated piece of political bombast. We are to galvanize our diplomacy by contracting commercial treaties and meddling in foreign quarrels. No doubt this will speedily make a navy necessary. In fact our proposed “American policy” is only an old, cast-off, eighteenth-century, John Bull policy, which has forced England to keep up a big army, a big navy, heavy debt, heavy taxes, and a constant succession of little wars. Hence we shall be taxed some more to pay for a navy. Then it is proposed to tax us some more to pay for canals through which the navy can go. Then we are to be taxed some more to subsidize merchant ships to go through the canal. Then we are to be taxed some more to subsidize voyages, _i.e._, the carrying trade. Then we are to be taxed some more to provide the ships with cargoes (§ 83).