stantially be the product of twelve hours' hand-labor in Mexico for one hour's labor with machinery in the United States. A Committee of Ways and Means of the United States House of Representatives of the Forty-ninth Congress have reported adversely to the ratification of a commercial treaty with Mexico, mainly for three reasons: First, because Mexico is so poor; second, because "the American citizen living in Mexico, and pursuing the peaceful avocations of industry and commerce, is without adequate protection to life and property"; third, because "to speak of permanent and desirable commercial relations with a government and people so estranged from us in sentiment is without promise of substantial and successful results." The first of the reasons is economic, the second political, while the third, having due regard to its meaning, may be well termed "Mongolian"; and all are unsound. The poor countries are the very ones with which it is especially desirable that the United States should cultivate trade, for, if the volume of trade be small, the profit of such trade is large—as is always the case where the results of rude or hand labor are exchanged for machinery product. If the facts constituting the basis for the second reason are as alleged, commercial isolation and restriction are no remedy for them. Commercial intimacy between nations is always productive of political good-fellowship, as isolation and restriction are of enmity; and for promoting amity with Mexico the modern drummer is likely to prove, for the present, a far better missionary than either the diplomatist or the soldier; and, as for the third, one might think that a precedent had been borrowed by the committee from China, where commercial intercourse with the United States itself, in common with Europe, was, until very recently, combated on the ground that the inhabitants of these countries were "foreign devils," with whom the enlightened Chinese ought not to be brought in contact.
Such, then, in conclusion, are the views of the writer respecting the present and future relations of the United States to Mexico. If he has offered anything, in the way of fact or argument, which may induce a belief, by people of the former, that the subject is worthy of a larger and more kindly consideration on their part than it has hitherto received, he will feel that his "Economic Study" has not been wholly unsatisfactory.
| THE EXTENSION OF SCIENTIFIC TEACHING.[1] |
By Professor T. H. HUXLEY.
ONCE more reverting to reminiscence, the present state of scientific education surely presents a marvelous and a most satisfactory contrast to the time, well within my memory, when no systematic prac-
- ↑ From the President's Address before the Royal Society, delivered at the Anniversary Meeting, November 30, 1885.
