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124 THE CRATER; article may be thrown open to the general competition, without import duty or tax of any sort, and yet the great bulk of the commerce of a country be so fettered as to put an effectual check upon anything like liberal intercourse. Suppose, for instance, that Virginia were an independent country. Its exports would be tobacco, flour, and corn ; the tobacco crop probably more than equalling in value those portions of the other crops which are sent out of the country. England is suffering for food, and she takes off everything like imposts on the eatables, while she taxes to bacco to the amount of many hundred per cent. Can that be called free trade ? There is another point of view in which we could wish to protest against the shouts and fallacies of the hour. Trade, perhaps the most, corrupt arid corrupting influence of life or, if second to anything in evil, second only to politics is proclaimed to be the great means of human izing, enlightening, liberalizing, and improving the human race ! Now, against this monstrous mistake in morals, we would fain raise our feeble voices in sober remonstrance. That the intercourse which is a consequence of commerce may, in certain ways, liberalize a man s views, we are willing to admit; though, at the same time, we shall insist that there are better modes of attaining the same ends. But it strikes us as profane to ascribe to this frail and mer cenary influence a power which there is every reason to believe the Almighty has bestowed on the Christian church, and on that alone ; a church which is opposed to most of the practices of trade, which rebukes them in nearly every line of its precepts, and which, carried out in its purity, can alone give the world that liberty and happiness which a grasping spirit of cupidity is so ready to impute to the desire to accumulate gold ! Fortunately, there was little occasion to dispute about the theories of commerce at the Reef. The little trade that did exist was truly unfettered ; but no one supposed that any man was nearer to God on that account, except as he was farther removed from temptations to do wrong. Still, the governing principle was sound ; not by canting about the beneficent and holy influences of commerce, but by leaving to each man his individuality, or restraining it I