INTERNATIONAL TRADE 165 
that stony kind from which public sentiment 
recoiled :—“ The economical advantages of 
commerce are surpassed in importance by those 
of its effects, which are intellectual and moral. 
It is hardly possible to over-rate the value, 
in the present low state of human improve 
ment, of placing human beings in contact with 
persons dissimilar to themselves, and with 
modes of thought and action unlike those 
with which they are familiar. Commerce is 
now what war once was, the principal source of 
this contact. Commercial adventurers from 
more civilized countries have generally been 
the first civilizers of barbarians. And com 
merce is the purpose of the far greater part of 
the communication which takes place between 
civilized nations. Such communication has 
always been, and is peculiarly in the present 
age, one of the primary sources of progress. 
To human beings, who, as hitherto educated, 
can scarcely cultivate even a good quality 
without running it into a fault, it is indispens 
able to be perpetually comparing their own 
notions and customs with the experience 
and example of persons in different circum 
stances from themselves ; and there is no 
nation which does not need to borrow from 
others, not merely particular arts or practices, 
but essential points of character in which its