Commercial freedom is making rapid progress in Prussia, Austria, Italy, and even in Spain.

The United States alone, among civilized nations, hold to the opposite principle.

Our anomalous position in this respect is due, as I think, to our anomalous condition during the past eight or nine years, already adverted to--a condition in which the protected classes have been restrained by no public opinion--public opinion being too intensely preoccupied with the means of preserving the national existence to notice what was doing with the tariff.

But evidences of a reawakening are not wanting.
There is scarcely an argument current among the protectionists of the United States that was not current in France at the time Bastiat wrote the _Sophismes Economiques_.

Nor was there one current in his time that is not performing its bad office among us.