public opinion does not seem to be made up either as to the to- pics, the scope, or the auditors of free discussion, but it is time that the right should be established above the danger of impeachment. From the date of Milton's "Areopagita," to the recent appearance of an anonymous but admirable "Essay on the formation and publication of opinions," the argument in its favor has been powerfully maintained, and there should no longer be a doubt that "all opposition to free and public discussion, arises from conscious weakness, and fear of the result."
Upon such a subject especially as political economy, no hesitation should obtain in publishing freely propositions however novel, or extreme. If wrong they can be argued down, or will sink of their own defect, and the discussion of them may lead, as did the pursuit of the philosopher's stone, to much abiding benefit. Still are there propositions, which, although grounded in common sense, and conducive to freedom, would be banned from a hearing as paradoxes, and wild theories. For example, such as, that custom houses are an opprobrium, and ought to be abolished as the machines of unequal taxation, manifold crimes, and national hostility—that the American industry which traverses the ocean in the modifications of foreign commerce, should be as free as in any shape it may assume while passing along our rivers, our roads, and our streets—that this ought to be a country—and such would make its proudest boast before the world—a country without debt, without beggars, and without taxes—that the creation of monopolies by law must cease totally—that government have no power to make a constituent rich, because that implies a power also to make him poor—that the citizen should be as free, and uninfluenced in his avocations as he is in his person, and his conscience—that interference upon these subjects is incompatible with the idea of liberal institutions, and that the constitution can confer no such authority, because it militates with the perfect and unalienable natural right of man, to regulate his own industry in the "pursuit of happiness."
The sitting of this commission is as yet but a little cloud above the horizon; fraught, however, to the ken of those who stand on that "vantage ground," whereof Lord Bacon makes mention, with the highest associations and mighty consequences. This should be the modern "Field of the Cloth of Gold." The victims, though once the champions, of the mercantile and manufacturing systems, have met in treaty to abjure the
