text:  Merchants widely engaged in mercantile speculations who were buying and selling in all parts of the world and whose interest it was to purchase as largely and as cheaply as possible and to sell as extensively and as dearly as was consistent with that extent had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that commerce should be left perfectly free that all protective duties for the shelter of native industry should be abolished and that the only charges on the transport of goods should be the cost of transit and their own profits