About 1828-30 the India and China trade of Philadelphia suddenly declined, and in a few years passed almost entirely into the hands of New York and Boston. In a historical paper, Mr. Cramp describes the conditions of this traffic at its zenith, and suggests the cause or causes of its remarkable decline. The custom, he says, was upon the arrival of the vessels to announce in the papers not only of Philadelphia but also of New York, Boston, Baltimore, and even less important cities, that the goods would be sold at auction, to begin on a certain day. These auction sales brought great numbers of merchants from other cities to Philadelphia, and during the first quarter of the nineteenth century it was beyond doubt the most profitable single line of traffic on the continent. The merchants engaged in it were not mere buyers and sellers as the term is understood now. They were important public characters, diplomatists and financiers, and their influence extended to the remotest parts of the earth. They amassed enormous fortunes and lived like princes. Some of them, either singly or in associations, owned fleets that would compare favorably with our then existing navy in numbers and tonnage. At its highest development, say, between 1825 and 1836, the volume of Philadelphia’s Oriental trade frequently reached sixty millions a year. [Illustration: CRUISER YORKTOWN] Finally, however, causes began to operate which gradually changed the tide of affairs. These causes, as stated in the historical paper by Mr. Cramp, were numerous. Among them was the fact that, as the original merchants who had built up the trade grew old or died, their immediate heirs or descendants did not care to carry on the enterprises of their fathers or their grandfathers, and many of them lived permanently abroad. Eventually, at the moment when the jealousy, envy, and ambition of rivals, particularly in New York and New England, had reached the critical stage, the Legislature of Pennsylvania enacted a law imposing a certain tax on all auction sales within the State. This was a tax ostensibly universal and covering the whole business of sales by auction, but its real purpose was to get at and derive revenue from the great auction business of the China and India trade of Philadelphia. In those days it might easily happen that the auction sales of two or three ships’ cargoes would exceed in value, and therefore in revenue, all the rest of the auction sales in the State at large during the same time. Of course, this was a development of a tendency on the part of the rural or country legislator of that time, which unfortunately has not entirely died out, to tax the great cities by special enactments for the benefit of the general revenue of the State.