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.
An article of Canadian production is worth, at Montreal, twenty dollars, and, from the expenses of transportation, thirty dollars at New York.

A similar article of New York manufacture costs forty dollars.

What is our course under these circumstances?
First, we impose a duty of at least ten dollars on the Canadian article, so as to raise its price to a level with that of the New York one--the government, withal, paying numerous officials to attend to the levying of this duty.

The article thus pays ten dollars for transportation, and ten for the tax.
This done, we say to ourselves: Transportation between Montreal and New York is very dear; let us spend two or three millions in railways, and we will reduce it one-half.