A paper read before the New York Free Trade Club, Feb. 20, 1879, by Charles L. Brace.

To the moralist, Free Trade is not most of all important as a means of producing and distributing wealth, (though in that it be the most efficient) but rather as a portion of that movement of humanity which, receiving its greatest impulse eighteen centuries ago, has been steadily ever since removing prejudices, lightening burdens, doing away with abuses, and bringing together into one, different classes and peoples and races. Living under the influence of this great humane impulse, we do not enough remember what effects it has already accomplished, what slow but permanent victories it has won, and what it proves itself adapted to win in the centuries to come.

It will better show us what changes await the world in such parts of its progress as relate to Free Trade, to note, briefly, a few of the improvement wrought by the spirit of humanity and by right reason in Europe during the last thousand years.