He Forgets That The Product He Wants To Purchase And
Make A Profit By, Is The Creation Of The Government, Without Whom
The People Would Still Be Savages.
He knows very well that free
trade would, as its first result, lead to the importation of whole
cargoes of arrack, which would be carried over the country and
exchanged for coffee.
That drunkenness and poverty would spread over
the land; that the public coffee plantations would not be kept up;
that the quality and quantity of the coffee would soon deteriorate;
that traders and merchants would get rich, but that the people would
relapse into poverty and barbarism. That such is invariably is the
result of free trade with any savage tribes who possess a valuable
product, native or cultivated, is well known to those who have
visited such people; but we might even anticipate from general
principles that evil results would happen.
If there is one thing rather than another to which the grand law
of continuity or development will apply, it is to human progress.
There are certain stages through which society must pass in its
onward march from barbarism to civilization. Now one of these stages
has always been some form or other of despotism, such as feudalism
or servitude, or a despotic paternal government; and we have every
reason to believe that it is not possible for humanity to leap
over this transition epoch, and pass at once from pure savagery
to free civilization. The Dutch system attempts to supply this
missing link, and to bring the people on by gradual steps to that
higher civilization, which we (the English) try to force upon
them at once.
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