It is asserted by an intelligent economist that, if performed by hand, the work done by machinery in Great Britain would require the labor of seven hundred millions of men,--a far larger number of adults than inhabit the globe.

It is not strange that, with this vast enginery, the power to produce has a constant tendency to outrun the power to consume.

Protectionists find in this a conclusive argument against surrendering the domestic market of the United States to the control of British capitalists, whose power of production has no apparent limit.

When the harmonious adjustment of international trade shall ultimately be established by "the Parliament of man" in "the Federation of the world," the power of production and the power of consumption will properly balance each other; but in traversing the long road and enduring the painful process by which that end shall be reached, the protectionist claims that his theory of revenue preserves the newer nations from being devoured by the older, and offers to human labor a shield against the exactions of capital..