what one's customers are, but it does in all regular and prolonged business. The condition of the customer determines how much he will buy, determines of what sort he will buy. Poor and ignorant people buy little and that of the poorest kind. The richest and the intelligent, having the more means to buy, buy the most, and always buy the best. Here, then, are the three liberties: liberty of the producer, liberty of the distributor, and liberty of the conThe first two need no discussion; they have been long thoroughly and brilliantly illustrated by the political economists of Great Britain and by her eminent statesmen; but it seems to me that enough attention has not been directed to the third; and, with your patience, I will dwell upon that for a moment, before proceeding to other topics.

sumer.

It is a necessity of every manufacturing and commercial people that their customers should be very wealthy and intelligent. Let us put the subject before you in the familiar light of your own local experience. To whom do the tradesmen of Liverpool sell the most goods at the highest profit? To the ignorant and poor, or to the educated and prosperous? (A voice: "To the Southerners." Laughter.) The poor man buys simply for his body; he buys food, he buys clothing, he buys fuel, he buys lodging. His rule is to buy the least and the cheapest that he can. He goes to the store as seldom as he can; he brings away as little as he can; and he buys for the least he can. (Much laughter.) Poverty is not a misfortune to the poor only who suffer it, but it is more or less a misfortune to all with whom he deals. On the other hand, a man well off-how is it with him? He buys in far greater quantity. He can afford to do it; he has the money to pay for it. He buys in far greater variety, because he seeks to gratify not merely

He

physical wants, but also mental wants. He buys for the satisfaction of sentiment and taste, as well as of sense. buys silk, wool, flax, cotton; he buys all metals-iron, silver, gold, platinum; in short, he buys for all necessities and all substances. But that is not all. He buys a better quality of goods. He buys richer silks, finer cottons, higher grained wools. Now a rich silk means so much skill and care of somebody's that has been expended upon it to make it finer and richer; and so of cotton and so of wool. That is, the price of the finer goods runs back to the very beginning, and remunerates the workman as well as the merchant. Now, the whole laboring community is as much interested and profited as the mere merchant, in this buying and selling of the higher grades in the greater varieties and quantities. The law of price is the skill; and the amount of skill expended in the work is as much for the market as are the goods. A man comes to market and says: "I have a pair of hands," and he obtains the lowest wages. Another man comes and says: "I have something more than a pair of hands; I have truth and fidelity." He gets a higher price. Another man comes and says: "I have something more; I have hands, and strength, and fidelity, and skill." He gets more than either of the others. The next man comes and says: "I have got hands, and strength, and skill, and fidelity; but my hands work more than that. They know how to create things for the fancy, for the affections, for the moral sentiments"; and he gets more than any of the others. The last man comes and says: "I have all these qualities, and have them so highly that it is a peculiar genius"; and genius carries the whole market and gets the highest price. (Loud applause.) So that both the work. man and the merchant are profited by having purchasers

that demand quality, variety, and quantity. Now, if this be so in the town or the city, it can only be so because it is a law. This is the specific development of a general or universal law, and therefore we should expect to find it as true of a nation as of a city like Liverpool. I know that it is so, and you know that it is true of all the world; and it is just as important to have customers educated, intelligent, moral, and rich out of Liverpool as it is in Liverpool. (Applause.) They are able to buy; they want variety, they want the very best; and those are the customers you want. That nation is the best customer that is freest, because freedom works prosperity, industry, and wealth. Great Britain, then, aside from moral considerations, has a direct commercial and pecuniary interest in the liberty, civilization, and wealth of every nation on the globe. (Loud applause.) You also have an interest in this, because you are a moral and religious people. ("Oh, oh!" laughter and applause.) You desire it from the highest motives; and godliness is profitable in all things, having the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come; but if there were no hereafter, and if man had no progress in this life, and if there were no question of civilization at all, it would be worth your while to protect civilization and liberty, merely as a commercial speculation. To evangelize has more than a moral and religious import-it comes back to temporal relations. Wherever a nation that is crushed, cramped, degraded under despotism is struggling to be free, you, Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, Paisley, all have an interest that that nation should be free. When depressed and backward people demand that they may have a chance to rise-Hungary, Italy. Poland-it is a duty for humanity's sake, it is a duty for the highest moral motives, to sympathize with them;

but besides all these there is a material and an interested reason why you should sympathize with them. Pounds and pence join with conscience and with honor in this design. Now, Great Britain's chief want is what?

They have said that your chief want is cotton. I deny it. Your chief want is consumers. (Applause and hisses.) You have got skill, you have got capital, and you have got machinery enough to manufacture goods for the whole population of the globe. You could turn out fourfold as much as you do, if you only had the market to sell in. It is not so much the want, therefore, of fabric, though there may be a temporary obstruction of it; but the principal and increasing want-increasing from year to year-is, where shall we find men to buy what we can manufacture so fast? (Interruption, and a voice, "The Morrill tariff," and applause.) Before the American war broke out, your warehouses were loaded with goods that you could not sell. (Applause and hisses.) You had overmanufactured; what is the meaning of over-manufacturing but this: that you had skill, capital, machinery, to create faster than you had customers to take goods off your hands? And you know that rich as Great Britain is, vast as are her manufactures, if she could have fourfold the present demand, she could make fourfold riches tomorrow; and every political economist will tell you that your want is not cotton primarily, but customers. Therefore, the doctrine, how to make customers, is a great deal more important to Great Britain than the doctrine how to raise cotton. It is to that doctrine I ask from you, business men, practical men, men of fact, sagacious Englishmen—to that point I ask a moment's attention. (Shouts of "Oh, oh!" hisses, and applause.) There are no more

continents to be discovered. (Hear, hear!) The market of the future must be found-how? There is very little hope of any more demand being created by new fields. If you are to have a better market there must be some kind of process invented to make the old fields better. (A voice, "Tell us something new," shouts of order, and interruption.) Let us look at it, then. You must civilize the world in order to make a better class of purchasers. (Interruption.)

If you were to press Italy down again under the feet of despotism, Italy, discouraged, could draw but very few supplies from you. But give her liberty, kindle schools throughout her valleys, spur her industry, make treaties with her by which she can exchange her wine, and her oil, and her silk for your manufactured goods; and for every effort that you make in that direction there will come back profit to you by increased traffic with her. (Loud applause.) If Hungary asks to be an unshackled nationif by freedom she will rise in virtue and intelligence, then by freedom she will acquire a more multifarious industry, which she will be willing to exchange for your manufactures. Her liberty is to be found-where? You will find it in the Word of God, you will find it in the code of history; but you will also find it in the Price Current (Hear, hear!); and every free nation, every civilized people-every people that rises from barbarism to industry and intelligence, becomes a better customer.

A savage is a man of one story, and that one story a cellar. When a man begins to be civilized, he raises another story. When you Christianize and civilize the man, you put story upon story, for you develop faculty after faculty; and you have to supply every story with