LET THEM GO SLOW.

551

The retaliations which have been practiced, in exceptional instances, upon foreign religious houses have often, if not always, grown out of reasons which, rightly, or wrongly, brought them into supposed responsibility for confessed foreign interventions and aggressions of a peculiarly perfidous and cruel character. These are nearly or quite the only deduction to be made from a record singularly mild, humane, peaceable, and sensible, which the Chinese have pursued toward the surrounding world.

The Chinese system of economy, after all due allowance is made for it, is still wasteful of human labor relatively to one that involves a larger use of animal labor and machinery. Its saving at the spigot, like that of all inferior modes of work, is effected by a spilling at the bung.

It leaves large portions of the hill country of China untilled; indeed, if any reliance is to be placed on the statistics concerning areas of cultivation furnished by the Chinese mandarins, it dooms five-sixths of the area of China to waste. Certainly, if we could introduce American cattle, horses, and agricultural implements into those parts of China which are now excluded from cultivation by their distance from the great rivers and canals, a gradual but more effective revolution would take place in Chinese methods, than would be effected by the introduction of railroads and telegraphs. It is probable that it would be a like mistake to press the Chinese for the privilege of introducing railways before we had introduced beasts of burden, as was from the first made, in our treatment of our native savages, in trying to convert them directly from a savage and hunting race, into a civilized and agricultural one, without passing them through the natural intermediate stage of herdsmen and shepherds. The Chinese should have cattle, horses, and agricultural implements, for at least a century, before they could safely or wisely permit the building, by a superior race, in their midst, of railways and steam manufactories. Their transition, to be safe, must be gradual. It must also be largely the work of the Chinese themselves. Not until the Chinese that come to the United States, learn and practice something of our methods of farming, will they take back those methods to their own country. Not until they do take back these methods to China, can we begin to find, in China, that market which will be most beneficial to both countries-viz., for our live stock, agricultural implements, and machinery. The first requisite to a freer and friendlier intercourse with China is that we should take pains to learn more of it.

A low estimate of Chinese honesty is common among Western nations, yet it is a curious fact that when the latter obtained their silk fabrics direct from China, a silk dress when made would stand without support, and wear from ten to thirty years; indeed, would descend to daughters as an heirloom. Now that Western integrity has had a chance to expend its exacting energy on the manufacture of silks, the article commonly sold will wear but a few weeks without destruction, and silks embodying the ancient qualities, of durability and purity, are not obtainable. Indeed, a public taste has set in which requires that silks should be relatively worthless. If any were now put on the market containing the earlier characteristics, they would meet with no sale. They were also the originators of porcelain ware, and of certain varieties of cotton cloth, in whose manufacture they are without superiors, except as machinery is superior to manual power. The interior silk, porcelain, cotton goods, paper and tea trades of China, are so much more important and valuable than their export or import in any of these lines, that if the latter were entirely obliterated or prohibited, prices and supply would hardly be affected. The Chinese are so eminent, as manufacturers, that they need no foreign trade whatever, and such trade is in no material sense a boon to them. Along with this complete versatility in manufactures, there has been a total exemption from famines and destitution, except as local emergencies are created by an overflow of rivers or like calamity, which it is a chief function of the imperial government to provide against and alleviate.*

*Mitchell," Accompaniment to Map of the World," etc., who places the population of China at 200,000,000, says: "A general good-humor and courtesy reign in their aspect and proceedings. Flagrant crimes, and open violations of the laws, are by no means common. The attachments of kindred are encouraged and cherished with peculiar force, particularly towards parents and ancestry in general. The support of the aged and infirm is inculcated as a sacred duty, which appears to be very strictly fulfilled. It is surely a phenomenon in national economy very worthy of notice, that, in a nation so immensely multiplied, and so straitened for food, there should not be such a thing as either begging or pauperism. The wants of the most destitute are relieved within the circle of their family and kindred. It is said to be customary, that a whole family, for several generations, with all its members, married and unmarried, live under one roof, and with only two apartments, one for sleeping, and the other for eating; a system, the possibility of maintaining which implies a great degree of tranquillity and harmony of temper. Within the domestic circle, however, and that of ceremonious social intercourse, seems to terminate all that is amiable in the Chinese disposition. In every other respect they show no interest in the welfare of their fellowcreatures, nor even the common feelings of sympathy. Repeated instances have oc curred of Chinese dropping into the sea, and being rescued by the English, while their own countrymen did not take the least notice, or make a single effort to save them. Their propensity to fraud has been amply noticed by travelers, but appears to have

FORCING FREE TRADE.

553

The state of partial subjugation of China and Japan, by the European powers and the United States, in 1854 to 1858, was one of the results of the strong tide of opinion in favor of coercive or forcible free trade, which culminated in the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 and the passage of the Robert J. Walker tariff, in the United States, in the same year. The platform of the democratic party in the United States, at this period, declared it to be one of the duties of enlightened nations to pursue an aggressive policy, in forcing free trade on nations not disposed to adopt it. The gentlemen in America, who were most determined in this policy, were the same who were also determined to force slave labor on communities whose defective economic education did not enable them to perceive its advantages. Mr. Townsend Harris, pursuant to this policy, began his residence in Japan, in 1856, with the fixed purpose of wheedling that country if possible, but forcing it if necessary, into adopting a tariff which was a copy in its essential structure of the Walker tariff of 1846, except that in the free-trade point of view it was more enlightened, since the duties were lower. The additional enlightenment necessary to make the duties lower was communicated, first, by an imposing and intimidating visit from Commodore Perry with an American fleet, supplemented in 1858 by the appearance of a combined English and French naval force. The treaty thus obtained was intended, by Mr. Harris, to provide for a duty of five per cent. only on effects required for the immediate use of alien residents, while goods intended for sale should pay 20 per cent., intoxicating liquors 35 per cent., and opium should be prohibited. There was also a five per cent. duty on exports.* But Lord Elgin, in negotiating the English treaty immediately afterward, caused cotton and woolen stuffs for sale to be added to the five per cent. list. In 1862 they were cajoled into abolishing the 35 per cent. duty on wines and spirits, and in 1864 they strove to avert an armed invasion by transferring a large number of Western manufactures from the classification of 20 per cent. to that of five per cent." Switzerland, in the same year, "when the European fleets were gathering for the assault, obtained a treaty which formally authorized the admission of almost every conceivable ware at the lowest rate." Under the "most favored nation clause, this enured to the equal advantage of all the other

been somewhat exaggerated. To the Hong merchants belongs the merit of having established a character of very strict honesty; and many even of what are called 'outside merchants' appear to be highly respectable."

* For particulars of the course of Western powers toward Japan, see E. H. House on "The Martyrdom of an Empire," in Atlantic Month'y, and on “The Tariff in Japan," New Princeton Review, January, 1888.

nations. The greatest hardship of these treaties is that, by a construction which would not for a moment be entertained between western nations, they have now for twenty years been held irrevocable. Western armed greed has denied to both nations an inherent part of their sovereignty. Thus we see free trade" transformed into that phase of international piracy, which first forces revenue laws upon semi-civilized nations, which are destructive both of their revenues and of their manufactures, and then holds at the cannon's mouth that these laws are irrevocable, solely because they are infamously injurious to the people over whom they are imposed.

At present, while the public expenditure is $80,000,000, and a tariff framed for revenue only would produce $15,000,000, and one for protection $30,000,000, the tariff for subjugation, imposed on Japan by European guns, produces only $2,500,000 a year. Even with these low rates of duty, British officials openly threaten the Japanese with cannonading, if they attempt to suppress smuggling. Thus, while in protective countries free traders object to protective laws, on the ground that they encourage smuggling, when, as in Japan and China, the duties are reduced virtually to 3 per cent. they flourish their fists under the nose of the officials and say: "Stop our smuggling if you dare." In 1870 an imposing and dignified embassy of Japanese notables visited Europe and America to urge the restoration of their clear national rights. Their request was as firmly ignored as if orientals had no rights which occidentals could be bound to respect. The taxes of Japan are collected almost wholly from land. Mr. House, long and amply familiar with the country from thirteen years of residence in it, says: "The civil war, which swept over the country in 1868, was infinitely less devastating in its effects upon the solid prosperity of the people, than the disruption caused by the commercial invasion of the few preceding years. Intercourse with strangers had largely augmented the national expenditures, and at the same time had drained the sources of supply. The cultivators of cotton, sugar, and other staples, which had been partially extinguished by excessive importation, were incapable of meeting the demands upon them. In several provinces the levy could not be collected by any process. Attempts to enforce it provoked revolts. . . . The gradual growth of external commerce wrought nothing but injury, for the indulgence in foreign novelties cost the country many millions of treasure, which were never reimbursed by an equivalent influx from abroad,"

CHAPTER XIV.

THE FREE TRADE CRITICISM.

197. Methods of Argument Concerning Protection and So-called "Free Trade."-There has been great repugnance, impatience and supercilious contemptuousness, on the part of a class of theorists, to the doctrine and practice of protection to industry, by tariffs, bounties, and navigation laws. This is the more singular, as such protection as a practice constituted, for 440 years, a leading feature in the policy of Great Britain,* is still prominent in her laws and policy, though veiled in some of its outward aspects, and pervades more or less the policies of all other nations except Turkey, India, and (by force) China and Japan.

The Marquis of Salisbury recently remarked in debate: "The whole civilized world rejects free trade." Protective theories have the qualified endorsement of Adam Smith+ and John Stuart

A working-man, P.C.Carroll, of Louisville, Ky., writes to the Bulletin of the American Iron and Steel Association the following well-condensed summary of English protective legislation prior to 1846:

"Knight's History of England, on page 123, vol. 2, tells us that in the third year of Henry IV. England levied a prohibitory tariff on the importation of laces, ribbons, fringes, twined silk, embroidered silk, bodkins, scissors, pins, knives, daggers, razors, andirons, gridirons, hammers, pincers, fire-tongs, ladles, dripping-pans, candlesticks, playing cards, and dice. This act graced the statute books of England from 1402 to 1842. Lord Stanhope is not a very bad authority on English laws.' This is what he says, in the 34th volume of the English Parliamentary Debates, page 178: 'We have now 977 acts of Parliament protecting our woolen industries; 964 acts protecting the fisheries; 460 acts protecting our tobacco manufacturers; 283 acts protecting our currency; and 440 acts regulating the wages of labor.' His lordship says that 194 of those acts were entirely prohibitory. John Wade (Black Book, or Corruption Unmasked,' tells us that, within his own recollection, the English Parliament passed 200 acts protecting the manufacture of alcoholic liquors; 54 acts protecting her cotton manufactures, and 22 acts protecting iron, steel, lead, copper, tin, etc., were scattered over and nearly filled 1,000 volumes of Parliamentary Reports."

+ Adam Smith in book iv., chapter ii., page 203, of the "Wealth of Nations," says: "Though there seem, however, to be two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign for the encouragement of domestic industry : "The first is when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country.

"The second case is when some tax is imposed at home upon the produce of domestic industry.