to start spinning-mills and weaving-factories, so as to find a local investment for their little savings. The result has been that employment has been found for large numbers who would otherwise have remained idle; the water-power that was running to waste has been utilized; profits larger than those of the Northern manufacturer have been realized; the price of cottons in the neighborhood has been reduced, and the general well-being of society generally promoted.

§ 252. (7) "The doctrine of protection leads on logically to the platform of the Communists. It teaches the people that it is the business of the state to provide for the prosperity and employment of the people. The next step is to assert that the people have a right to employment, and that if the competition of individual capitalists fail to furnish them with that, the state must step in to establish national workshops for the benefit of those who are out of work. From this, to the monopoly of all industry, and consequently of all property by the state, is an easy descent."

The Nation (April 9th, 1874) speaks of "European socialism, the seeds of which were naturally found in Continental centralization, and were brought to this country in the protective system."

Protection cordially accepts the existing order of society, the present distribution of wealth and the lawful freedom of individual action, as right and proper. Its chief advocates (Thiers, &c.) have been zealous opponents of Communistic socialism, and the ablest defenders of the rights of property. While it asserts that the industrial growth and welfare of the people must be among the first cares of the statesman, it does not teach--what all experience refutes, that this can be attained through the direct action of the state as the employer and organizer of labor in general, while it with consistency accords the state a monopoly of a few departments, such as the post-office.

That the protectionist principle bears some resemblance to the false positions of the Communists, or can be made to do so in clever but hostile statements, we do not care to deny. It contains the truth of which communism is the counterfeit falsehood,—the truth that it is the duty of the state to promote the general welfare." It thus furnishes the best refutation of

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communism, for error is never defeated and put to rest by bare contradictions, but by the statement of the truth that lies nearest to them, or even involved in them, and that gives them what vitality they have. If the assertion of that duty leads on to communism there is unhappily no escape for the American nation ; the country stands already committed to it by the preamble to the United States Constitution. That that preamble pointed to a protectionist policy is clear from the expressions of popular feeling while the Constitution was under discussion, and from the legislation adopted by the first Congress under the new government.

Throughout the earlier chapters we have seen two great contrasted theories of the nature and effects of social progress under the existing constitution of society. The one declares that the world under the freedom of individual action is drifting steadily toward distress and misery; that whatever progress is achieved enures only to the benefit of the few, and rather detracts from than adds to the well-being of the many; that it is in the interests of the rich to keep the wages of the poor as low as possible so long as free competition is the law and rule of industry. Whoever holds with this teaching must vibrate between the theory of state passivity or free trade, and that of the renovation of society by the destruction of the existing rights of property and methods of distribution. He will incline to the former whenever he is least hopeful of the future of society, or least alive to its miseries. He will favor the other whenever he is awake to those miseries, but confident that they are not the necessary lot of mankind.

The other body of teaching declares that power and freedom go hand in hand in the world's progress; that except by artificial interference every gain for man in power over nature is a gain for all; that wealth naturally tends to an equable distribution among all classes; that the interest of the capitalist is to pay well those whom he employs so as to develop their power to the uttermost; that labor continually and naturally grows in power over all the accumulations of past labor that we call

capital. If the latter teaching be likely to lead some of the thoughtless into communism or socialism, is it not far more likely that the former will lead thither those of the thoughtful who are not able to think their way out of these doctrines?

And we are not left to conjecture here. Mr. Mill is certainly, after Adam Smith, the most distinguished writer of the Free Trade School; in his Autobiography he discloses the fact that his hearty acceptance of the doctrines of Malthus, Ricardo and his own father, had led him to such gloomy conclusions as to the results of the existing organization of society and its distribution of property, that he had come to the conclusion that it would be a change for the better were some modification of socialism to be substituted so as to put a limit to the great and growing inequality of wealth and extension of poverty that he saw around him. He also tells us, what is the fact, that Bastiat adopted in part the views of the Nationalist school in order the better to fight the Communists who attack landed property. What Schultze-Delitzsch and his opponent Lassalle have to say on this question has already been told (§ 114).

CHAPTER TWELFTH.

THE SCIENCE AND ECONOMY OF MANUFACTURES.-THE

PRACTICE.

In other

In all the not left de

§ 253. The theory and the practice of national economy, as already remarked, (§ 6), do not always go hand in hand. The theory in some cases is much better than the practice; men see and approve the better course and follow the worse. cases it is worse than the practice, or lags behind it. more necessary and practical affairs of life, men are pendent upon the possession of correct theories. stinctively the right thing, having no conscious reason, or only a bad one; and after their practice has been repeatedly subjected to the censures or the mockery of shallow theorists, it is at last vindicated by the riper judgment and clearer insight of wiser men.

They do in

It is, therefore, a mistake to suppose that the practice of national economy at a time when correct or current theories of the subject had not yet begun to be formed, is unworthy of our study. Men "builded wiser than they knew" in many things; the great and wholesome instincts that grew out of the national life into which they were born, and from which their own life derived half its value, led them aright where they had no theory; and only shallow doctrinaires would depreciate the results as having no right to exist, because not attained logically.

§ 254. The ancient writers on political philosophy confined their attention chiefly to the jural state. But the actual rulers had a clear notion of economic policy. Boeckh has shown (as against Heeren) that Athens took measures to protect home industry, to develop its various forms, and to make the state independent of its rivals for the necessaries of life. The low conceptions of political morality that prevailed, allowed of the use of means to this end which are not capable of vindication. If an ally of Athens had corn to sell, it must be brought to the port of

Athens (the Piræos), and a certain proportion must be sold for use in the city itself, and at a fixed price, before any could be disposed of at competition prices to the merchants of other cities. The effect of these measures was limited by the nature of the political constitution of Greece. In this as in other matters every city legislated for itself; nothing was done to benefit Greece as a whole, and to bring her different divisions into the close and friendly relations of mutual helpfulness. Even the structure of the country forbade this; it was easier and cheaper to feed Athens with corn from the Chersonesus than to carry food over the mountain passes from Boeotia. That the country never became an industrial whole, is connected with the fact that it was never a political unit. It fell into subjection through the weakness of its social constitution.

Rome also adopted a Protectionist or Nationalist policy in earlier times, when she was still a people among the peoples. Already she was a great industrial city, competing with Carthage for the commercial preeminence of the Mediterranean. When she became an empire, the enemy and the destroyer of nationalities, she of course abandoned that policy.

§ 255. In the middle ages industry was in the hands of chartered guilds, and was a matter of privilege and prescription. The states that awoke to the importance of the industrial life of the community all took measures to protect and cherish local industries. In Italy the great prosperity of Venice was largely owing to the care with which she protected all the interests of her merchant princes, and the rival cities of the mainland followed hard in her footsteps.

Charles V., of Spain and Germany, studied the maxims and methods of Venetian policy, and adopted them in Spain. But when the industries of his kingdom sprang into life, he loaded them down with oppressive and vexatious burdens, in order to raise money for his wars. The alcavala imposed a tax upon every transaction, the intercourse between the provinces was put under a heavy tariff of duties, and the right to collect these was farmed to individuals who were often foreigners. Every