We are about to reap in France a signal specimen
of the fruits of that restrictive policy which we are beginning to relinquish. Not long since, Parliament repealed the restriction on the export of machinery : France now proposes to lay enhanced ihiport-dutitt on machinery, according to a sliding-scale. Every nation, says the Finance Minister, makes progress m civilization in proportion to its mechanical skill ; the making of machinery, therefore, must be encouraged ; and hence his new measure. He professes to follow the example of England, which has recently acted in so diame- trically opposite a direction 1 Many English advocates of " pro- tection " or of " reciprocity " will point to the project as an instance of the way in which the liberal advances of this country are met by others : it is rather an instance of the way in which—we cannot yet call it our cast-cff, but our own past policy, is retorted upon us in imitations ; and from the fact of the adverse imitation a hopeful augury would deduce the probability that cur perseverance in a wiser course would gradually in for us more propitious imi- tation, when we are seen to be iu earnest.
