When the issue is thus stated, it becomes manifest at once that the amount of English taxation can have nothing to do with the decision. The consideration of what the manufacturer has to pay for taxes can have no weight except upon one hypothesis-that a previous decree has been passed that the trade under discussion must be kept, at all hazards, alive in the country, whether by its own self-supporting energy, or at the expense of the public through the instrumentality of Protection. There are, indeed, some special trades which are entitled to such a decree. No one would consent, if ships of war could be bought more cheaply from foreign countries, to render the existence of the English navy dependent on purchases made from foreigners. But such trades are extreme cases, and are governed by motives wholly distinct from mere considerations of commercial or economical profit.

A strong attempt was made during the contest on the repeal of the Corn Laws, to defend agricultural protection on the ground of the extreme importance of not suffering the nation to be dependent on foreigners for food; but it could not live through the debate. It was seen that England must have sunk to a third-rate power if she had fallen under the doom of feeding herself. And what is the feeling now when, for a large portion of the year, her people would perish of famine, if foreign supplies failed to arrive at her ports? At no former period of her history, probably, have the people of England felt such confidence in the unfailing supply of abundant food. The fields of the foreigner are felt to be her fields as truly as those which are spread over her counties. She commands the

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agricultural energy of the whole world; Free Trade is the guarantee of her safety.

And now what shall we say of the language which speaks of foreigners as rivals or competitors whose success is our loss? If such words are used of what are called third markets, in which English and foreign producers meet to offer goods to the inhabitants of those countries, then no doubt the foreigners are rivals, and their success is English loss. If English and Belgian iron masters send rails to Australia, and the Belgian rails are found to be the cheaper of the two and are bought, then England will have lost her customer and with him an important trade. But in this place our business is with free trade over against protection, and with the cry to keep out the foreigner by legislation as a mischievous competitor in one's own country. In such a case, it is a new aspect of trade to regard the man of whom you buy as a rival, for trade was wont to be described as a friendly and social act. These modern days are fertile in new discoveries. Has the intelligence of the country been enlightened with the revelation that the American who buys cotton cloth of an Englishman commits an act of hostility against his fellow-countrymen? Is it not plain that these ideas issue from the lips of interested traders of men who manufacture the same goods as those bought from the foreigner, and for whom, no doubt, he is a real and possibly a destructive rival ?

There exists a real and undeniable hostility in this matter--the hostility of the protected workmen against their country. They know that in an open market the goods of the foreigners and not theirs will be bought, and their object is to compel their fellow-countrymen

to support them by giving them an extra price for their merchandise. It is a natural feeling, and let us not be angry with these men. Who is there that can bear easily to see a flourishing business irrevocably decaying away, and himself obliged to exchange assured maintenance and comfort for a livelihood which, till he betakes himself to something else, may be precarious. It is our duty to feel sympathy for this suffering, as one might and ought to have sympathised with the troubles of the manuscript-writers on the invasion of printing; but the law of human life and of national association forbids that any class of men should be permanently supported at the expense of the community. What is given to them is taken from others who can ill afford the gift. were established, that] in any form whatever, even as carrying on a large industry which employs many workmen, any portion of the population has a right to be maintained at the public cost, how is it possible to stop short of communism? Protection is only a contribution in disguise from the public for the support of some particular persons.

If once the principle

It remains to speak of reciprocity; it need not occupy us long. The doctrine of reciprocity admits the principle and the practice of Free Trade to be right generally, but it annexes a condition to free trade in a particular case. If the foreigner refuses to meet our adoption of free trade by a similar action on his own part, if he places protective duties on our goods and thus prevents the products of our own industry from freely competing with him in his own country, then the proper course is to meet him with the same measure on

our side. Protection is admitted by the doctrine of reciprocity to be wrong in principle, but when it becomes counter-protection and retaliation, it is then the correct policy to pursue; it is right to give blow for blow. If the Frenchman injures the English makers of iron by a protective duty on English iron on its entrance into France, it is fitting to punish him by crippling his trade in silks with England. This language is the offspring of pure confusion of thought; it utterly misconceives the nature of all trade. It refuses to regard an act of trade, by itself alone, as a single transaction; it insists on coupling it with another with which it has no connection whatever. A purchase of silk is one thing, separate and distinct, a sale of iron is another, equally separate and distinct.

If iron is the only article which England has to sell and to give in exchange for foreign goods, then of course, if the Frenchman refuses to buy English iron, England cannot buy French silks, and all trade between the two countries simply comes to an end altogether. But this is not what the advocate of reciprocity means or intends. He always supposes that trade will go on between England and France, but there must be none in French silks simply because there is none in English iron. He demands only that an injury shall be inflicted on the French manufacturers of silks in retaliation for that inflicted on the English manufacturers of iron. But there is a fatal flaw in this reasoning of the preacher of uniformity. He leaves out of consideration the English buyer of silk-in other words, the people of England. To take the case of the ribbon makers of Coventry, in whose behalf this doctrine of reciprocity

was most warmly pleaded. Why, solely because the French do not choose to buy the better and cheaper iron of England, is a tax to be imposed on every consumer of silks in England-a gratuitous tax, one of pure passion and temper? That the men of Coventry ought not to make ribbons if cheaper ones and more of them can be obtained from France with the same amount of English labour has been already shown, and is not denied by him who takes his stand on reciprocity. Why then should free trade be forbidden to say to the people of England-buy your ribbons of France, and let France or some other country buy in return those goods which England will have to make to exchange for the ribbons? The Coventry men, when the transition state is over, will themselves be gainers also, for larger and more profitable trade will be created. For the English people to spite themselves because these perverse Frenchmen will not buy English iron would be simply to commit folly in England because folly is committed in France.

Free Trade is right for its own sake, for the sake of the nation that produces it, independently of all regard for what the foreigner may or may not do. If the foreigner sells he must buy to an equal amount. That is absolutely certain, and the whole question between Free Trade and Protection is always and fully raised and decided in the purchase of each single article without reference to any other buying and selling. Protection is bad in itself-bad for the country which embodies it in its statutes, harmful and impoverishing to the nation which forbids its people to employ themselves in those ⚫ industries for which they possess the greatest aptitude,