ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECADENCE.

Thames Star, Volume VI, Issue 1796, 5 October 1874, Page 2

ENGLAND'S COMMERCIAL DECADENCE.

There is no such thing as being beaten, out of all the markets of the world at one time. What being beaten out of a market really means, is that a particular product exchanges in that market for.toss of other products than will replace with a profit the capital and labor which .produced it. But that can only b>w,hen the capital and labour which prefaced it might have been more advanSgeously employed on making something else. If the product is one for the production of which the producing country has as great a natural advantage as it has for any other, then it must pay to produce it, even though every other nation can produce it at a less cost of labor. No doubt you will not be as well paid for your labour as your more fortunate rivals; But you will be better paid than you could be ' by any other application of your labour,, and prosperity is measured not by com- - paring yourself with somebody, but by comparing yourself with yourself. A man is prosperous, who earns, more at.less cost to himself than he did, even' though •• some other man earns the same at for less ' , cost than he. England will be prosperous if she.can earn as many comforts,and luxuries for her people at less cost,than before, and that depends not nearly so" much on her relative place, in the commercial world as on the absolute development of the resources of that world at large.—Belfast Witness.