equal gain.

The general truth must not be lost sight of here, even in passing, that all trade whatsoever is based upon a Diversity of relative Advantage as between the parties exchanging products. If, for example, the Hills of Judah and the Mountains of Israel had been covered with timber suitable for building the temple, and the coasts of Tyre and Sidon and the foot-hills of Lebanon had been fertile stretches of arable land, this particular trade would never have been thought of and could never have been realized. There would have been no gain in it for either party, and unless there be a valid gain for both parties at least in prospect, no trade will ever spring into being, because there would be no motive, no impulse, no reason, in it. Unless the Jews could get the timber easier by raising grain to pay for it, and the Tyrians get the oil and wheat and barley easier by cutting and floating timber to pay for them,—no trade; but the greater easiness to each actually came about, because each had an Advantage both natural and acquired over the other in his own rendering, and the mutual gain of the trade was wholly owing to that circumstance. So far as that matter went, the Tyrians had no cause to envy their neighbors the superior soil of the south, for they reaped indirectly but effectively a part of those harvests for themselves; and the Jews had no reason to be jealous of their northern neighbors on account of the noble forests crowning their mountains, because through trade they secured easily to themselves a share of that vast natural advantage. Diversity of Advantage both natural and acquired is the sole ground of Trade both domestic and foreign; and consequently by means of trade the peculiar advantages of each are fully shared in by all.

It is perhaps less obvious but surely equally true, that the greater the relative diversity of advantage as between two exchangers, the more profitable does the exchange become to each. If the Vale of Sharon had been twice as fertile as it was, and the cedars of Lebanon twice as large and lofty as they were, the easier and better would Israel have gotten its timber, and the more secure and abundant would have become the food of Tyre and Sidon; and, therefore, the more unreasonable, or rather the more absurd and wicked, would have been any envy or jealousy of either of the superior advantages at any point or points of the other. So universally. By the divine Purpose as expressed in the constitution of Nature, in the structure of Man, and in the laws of Society, Trade in good measure and degree imparts to each the bounties of all, arms each with the power of all, and impels each by the progress of all.

One other important matter is closely connected with these two Renderings, which is the fifth bit in succession of our present analysis, namely this, that traffic renderings always make necessary new and better routes of travel and transportation. It is mainly for this reason, that persons and things have to be carried to distances less or greater in order to consummate these Renderings of home and foreign commerce, that roads by land and routes by sea have been sought for and found, made and made shorter, improved as to method and facilitated as to force, from the dawn of History until the present hour. It was to get the goods of India, and so find a market for the goods of Europe, that the earliest land routes between the two were tried and maintained. The ground-thought of Columbus, meditated on for years, was to discover a new commercial way to India; Magellan with the same intent sailed westward through the Straits that wear his name, and so circumnavigated the globe; repeated searches mainly with the mercantile view, never long intermitted, have attempted ever since the North-West or the North-East passage to India; Vasco da Gama in 1497 boldly accomplished the East passage, and thus changed for all the Continents the channels of trade; the West now trades with all the East through the Suez Canal, dug for that express purpose; and the words, "Panama" and "Nicaragua" are upon everybody's lips, simply because through Central America is the shortest and safest route for men and goods to and from all the Oceans.

Quite recently Dr. W. Heyd has announced through the Berlin Geographical Society the discovery of two commercial routes from India to the West not hitherto described. Trebizond (on the Black Sea) and Tana (at the mouth of the Don) were the chief distributing points. Through Tana passed westward the pepper and ginger and nutmeg and cloves; and the price of spices is said to have doubled in Italy, when the Italians were for a time shut out of Tana in 1343. The chief overland route from India to Tana ran through Cabul to Khiva by the Oxus, and then by land through Astrakhan. The other route to Trebizond passed through Persia, and came out by Tabriz to the Black Sea. It may perhaps be pardoned, if a far homelier, more modern, and even local, illustration be given of the present point, that trade makes roads. The western wall of Williamstown is the mountain range of the Taconics, whose general height is about 2000 feet above tide water at Albany. Within the limits of this town are four natural depressions or passes over this range, which is also the watershed between the Hoosac River on the east and the Little Hoosac on the west. About the beginning of this century, the population was quite sparse in both these valleys, while the impulse to travel and traffic over the barrier was sufficient to build (wholly at local expense) wagon roads over each of the four passes, one of which soon after became a turnpike between Northampton and Albany; and another was built mainly to accommodate the medical practice on the west side of the mountain of Dr. Samuel Porter—a Williamstown surgeon of local eminence. So soon as railroads were constructed to run down these parallel valleys (railroads themselves are perhaps the best illustration of the point in hand), the mountain roads were relatively deserted, and only two of them are now open to transient travel.[2]

Lastly, (f) There were two satisfactions, the satisfaction of the southern king in actually obtaining the excellent timbers, without which the cherished national temple could not have gone up; and the satisfaction by the northern king in the easy receiving of the abundant food products for the daily maintenance of his court and kingdom. The simple story of these commercial transactions between Jew and Tyrian indicates clearly enough, what might have been anticipated and what always happens in such circumstances, not only a mutual satisfaction at the completion of each specific exchange, but also a general relation of contentment and peace in consequence of advantageous commercial intercourse. "And Hiram, king of Tyre, sent his servants unto Solomon; for he had heard, that they had anointed him king in the room of his father; because Hiram was ever a lover of David. And it came to pass, when Hiram heard the words of Solomon, that he rejoiced greatly, and said, Blessed be the Lord this day, which hath given unto David a wise son over this great people; and there was peace between Hiram and Solomon; and they two made a league together."

It is plain to reason and to all experience, that mutual Satisfactions are the ultimate thing in exchanges. Our present analysis can go no further, for the reason, that we have now reached in Satisfactions the end, for the sake of which all the previous processes have been gone through with. Persons do not engage in buying and selling for the mere pleasure of it, but always for the sake of some satisfactions derivable to both parties from the