Finally: and this will, no doubt, recommend it to the public, it will not increase the Budget one cent; but the contrary. It will not augment the number of office-holders, nor the exigencies of State; but the contrary. It will put in hazard the liberty of no one; but on the contrary, it will secure to each a greater freedom. I have been led to this discovery, not from accident, but from observation, and I will tell you how. I had this question to determine: "Why does any article made, for instance, at Montreal, bear an increased price on its arrival at New York?" It was immediately evident to me that this was the result of _obstacles_ of various kinds existing between Montreal and New York. First, there is _distance_, which cannot be overcome without trouble and loss of time; and either we must submit to these troubles and losses in our own person, or pay another for bearing them for us. Then come rivers, hills, accidents, heavy and muddy roads. These are so many _difficulties_ to be overcome; in order to do which, causeways are constructed, bridges built, roads cut and paved, railroads established, &c. But all this is costly, and the article transported must bear its portion of the expense. There are robbers, too, on the roads, sometimes, and this necessitates railway guards, a police force, &c. Now, among these _obstacles_, there is one which we ourselves have lately placed, and that at no little expense, between Montreal and New York. This consists of men planted along the frontier, armed to the teeth, whose business it is to place _difficulties_ in the way of the transportation of goods from one country to another. These men are called custom-house officers, and their effect is precisely similar to that of rutted and boggy roads. They retard and put obstacles in the way of transportation, thus contributing to the difference which we have remarked between the price of production and that of consumption; to diminish which difference, as much as possible, is the problem which we are seeking to resolve. Here, then, we have found its solution. Let our tariff be diminished: we will thus have constructed a Northern railway which will cost us nothing. Nay, more, we will be saved great expenses, and will begin, from the first day, to save capital. Really, I cannot but ask myself, in surprise, how our brains could have admitted so whimsical a piece of folly as to induce us to pay many millions to destroy the _natural obstacles_ interposed between the United States and other nations, only at the same time to pay so many millions more in order to replace them by _artificial obstacles_, which have exactly the same effect; so that the obstacle removed and the obstacle created, neutralize each other, things go on as before, and the only result of our trouble is a double expense.