HE battle of Protection and Free

THE

Trade has been fought out amongst us, and Parliament and people have decided to try what a National Policy will do for Canada. It may be interesting at this time to take a glance at the position of the trade question in other countries, and to inquire whether the present revival of Protectionism, the world over, be a mere surface phenomenon, soon to pass away, or whether it has its motive power in forces deep seated and enduring, and is therefore likely to be permanent and to govern the commercial future of the civilized world.

Of the fact that a great revival of Protectionism is now going on there can be no doubt; indeed it is not disputed by those who certainly would dispute it if they could. An English journal of recent date puts into a few terse and pithy statements what everybody is saying respecting the 'alarming' advance of Protectionist policy on the continent of Europe. Germany, declared to be England's boldest commercial enemy, is preparing for a policy of high custom-house walls, and is deliberately building up a tariff to keep out English goods. All this she is doing, too, under the lead of the strongest statesman in Europe, the man of blood and iron,' who has declared in favour of fostering home industries by keeping out the foreigner. The work that Cobden did in France is nearly undone, and the 'liberal commercial régime' of Napoleon the Third is about to be stamped out. On all sides the spirit of Protection is manifest. Russia, Italy, Austria, Turkey and the minor States, are

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looking to heavy duties either to repair their finances or for the avowed purpose of building up home manufactures. This general Protectionist agitation bodes dire evil to England, and meanwhile English statesmen fold their hands and, with impressive dignity, say that they can do nothing

that is, nothing beyond the usual course of diplomatic persuasion. Russia, being in deplorable straits for money, has a plea for high duties, which leaves Free Trade negotiators without an answer. France had the same plea when she raised her duties to pay the German indemnity and other war debt, and she still retains it, and will use it to baffle the importunity of Free Traders from across the Channel. Other nations have the same contention at hand and ready for use. Austria, Italy, and Spain may all give their enormous and indifferently paid national debts as reasons why they must impose high duties. This is their convenient defence against diplomatic pressure from England; but underneath the forms of international politeness it is well understood, on both sides, that high duties are really sought for purposes of protection even more than for revenue. But it is in France that the chief danger to Free Trade is at present to be observed. She has made haste to 'denounce' all commercial treaties by which she is now bound, and it is strongly suspected that, once free of these fetters to her action, she will be the reverse of hasteful in again putting herself under such restraint. The London Times, after viewing the alarming rise of Protection in Ger

many, under the auspices of Bismarck, turns to France, and says that there the same signs of reaction meet the eye. A general tariff of a retrograde character' awaits discussion, and the danger of France's going astray will be greater when she has cast off the fetters of commercial treaties. The value of such international obligations to the Free Trade cause is thus stated by the Times: Inconsistent as treaties may appear to be with the creed of a freetrader, who ought to trust that, like truth, it will prevail against error, they are useful mechanical devices by which countries in danger of backsliding are kept in the right path and are saved from the influences of seductive temporary delusions. They operate very much as taking the pledge does on a man of weak will. The end of the treaty with France may be the beginning of much mischief.' With the close of the current year nearly the whole system of European commercial treaties falls in, and the prospects for their renewal in the interest of Free Trade are not bright. Here is an English opinion of the prospect:They (the French) are now engaged, not in the reconstruction of commercial treaties on the old liberal lines, which all practical minds approve, but in the preparation of a general tariff which is to form the basis for further international commercial negotiations. This tariff, when ready, will have to pass the Deputies' and the Senators' Chambers; and it is calculated that it cannot obtain the force of law before October. There will remain, then, three months, when most statesmen are enjoying the rest and pleasures of the recess, to negotiate the new treaties with the Great Powers.'

Nor do commercial treaties seem to be in favour in the new world, any more than in the old. Mr. Cox, a Democratic leader in the American Congress, proclaims the doctrine that such treaties are virtually a surrender

of legislative powers belonging to the representatives of the people, and holds that no more such surrenders should henceforth be made. If Reciprocity be deemed desirable, then he would establish it by the concurrent legislation of two countries, but not by treaty. And he recently introduced pro forma and as a trial pattern merely of what might be done, a Bill providing for Reciprocity with Canada, with very low duties on manufactured goods, the same on both sides. How such a measure could be adopted while Canada remains a part of the British Empire, we do not see, and probably Mr. Cox is looking quite another way in proposing it.

But his action in the matter, and the prominence given, on both sides of the Atlantic, to the doctrine that commercial treaties are virtually fetters upon the commercial independence of nations, abridging the legisla tive power of Parliaments, is a sign of the times. In our own country Mr. Tilley, with a statesmanlike understanding of the signs, has taken the initiative towards substituting concurrent legislation for the fetters of treaties. By a short section of the new Customs Act it is provided that American natural products, the same as under the old treaty, are to come free into Canada, by Order-in-Council, whenever it shall please our neighbours to admit similar articles free, into the United States. No more Plenipotentiaries or Commissioners going to Washington; their occupation is forever gone, as far as commercial treaty-making is concerned. When our neighbours are ready for such Reciprocity as we approve of, they can get it at once, by an Act of Congress in a dozen lines. Manufactured articles are left out of our standing offer, embodied in section 6, and so complications arising out of our colonial relations with Great Britain-that country of many manufactures are wholly avoided.

Coleridge has somewhere said, that whereas with the ancient Romans war

was their business, in modern times business is war. Whatever convictions of the truth of this view he may have drawn from the circumstances of his day, a much stronger conviction of its truth is forced upon us by those of our own time. Then Protection was a mass of crudities, undigested and incoherent; now it is in course of development, with scientific aim and purpose, into a system of enlightened national selfishness. In vain are the arguments of Adam Smith, powerful as they were against certain absurdities prevailing in his time, invoked against Protection as it is shaping itself in ours. He denounced Protection of the few at the expense of the many, but what would he have said had he lived to see Protection demanded by the million, and resisted chiefly by a few learned doctrinaires and by the narrower interests of mere carrying, buying, and selling, as distinguished from the broader and more popular interests of actual production? We may properly say, 'the narrower interests,' for surely the actual production of commodities is something greater and more important than the mere business of their distribution, however important the latter may be. All Bastiat's verbal cleverness goes for nothing against the verdict of his countrymen; he is answered by simply pointing to Protectionist France in 1879. Coleridge saw no pressure of competition in his time to match the tremenduous pressure now felt in all the leading avenues of trade. Therefore we say that his remark on commercial war has immensely greater force now than it had when he made it. It is the progress and development of international commercial war

that we are now witnessing--the struggle of Governments to find work for their respective peoples. The war of sword and gun may abate; subjects may gain wisdom enough to put their veto upon the game of kings and states

men.

But the problem of work and bread for the people must remain, and

it must be a fortunate Government that can afford to give to foreigners the work and wages which its own people demand. Most certainly there is no Government of Continental Europe in such position to-day.

If we turn to America what better prospect do we see for the Free Trade cause? In the United States the Morrill tariff, established eighteen years ago, is still the law of the land; such amendments as have been made to it are conceived altogether in the spirit of Protection, with the design of ensuring the permanence of the system, and of strengthening it against attacks on exposed points. A vigorous denouncer of negro slavery has Mr. John Bright been, in his time, but to him, as a Free Trader, it should be a fact of ominous import that in the United States Slavery and Free Trade should have been twin pillars of the same edifice, and that with the fall of the former the latter also came to the ground. But for the Slave Power, indeed, the American people would have declared decisively for Protection long before they did, and the commercial event of Lincoln's time would have come in the time of Harrison or Tyler. That power was a weight lying upon the nation's will, and preventing its natural expression; the weight being removed from the national councils, the popular will asserted itself at once. Vain is it to hope that any future Congress will reverse the verdict, or that the sharpwitted American people will after this deliberately legislate in favour of foreign producers. During these eighteen years Protection has struck its roots deep and wide in the United States, and now it has taken a grip of the country immensely stronger than ever it had before. Protection has caused mills, factories and workshops to start up and enlarge themselves; these, again, have bred a numerous working population, living by manufactures; this population constitutes a voting power, and will vote

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to sustain that by which it lives. In a word, Protection has bred Protectionist votes, and these Protectionist votes will perpetuate Protection. used to be the old story, that Protection lived only within its strongholds in New England and Pennsylvania, and that with the growth and expansion of the great West, which had no interest in manufactures, an Overwhelming majority of the whole nation in favour of Free Trade would certainly follow. But this view has been remarkably falsified by the event. It was based upon the assumption that, the great West would continue to have no interest in manufactures; but just here the Free Trade prophets turned out to be all wrong. The Morrill tariff caused manufactures to spread westward, and now the West as well as the East contributes its material guarantee for the continuation of Protection. Another New England is now rising up west of Lake Michigan, and other Pennsylvanias are being developed in Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri. The Appalachian Mountain region, in the South, as well as that other part of the same chain, called the Alleghanies, in the North, boasts of its metallic treasures; and Georgia competes with Massachusetts in the spinning of cotton yarn. Protection, before deemed to be a growth of the East only, has now spread its roots westward to the Mississippi, and, instead of being relaxed, its hold upon the whole country is every year becoming stronger. Not a few manufacturers merely, but millions of working people, who have votes, are interested in its continuance. The gain by the Democrats of a majority in Congress, for the first time since the outbreak of the war, has raised again the old hopes in the breasts of some, who fancy that the party will surely follow up its traditions of former days, and attempt the gigantic task of undoing the Protectionist legislation of the Republicans. But, though there are some Democratic statesmen who

would willingly break a lance for Free Trade, full well do they understand that the masses of the people, belonging to their own party, will follow them in no such Quixotic assault. Democratic leaders have on this question to step carefully, for fear of their being deserted by the multitude, and left high and dry, without popular sup port. They may present platform resolutions having a Free Trade sound, and they may even labour hard, in the Committee of Ways and Means, to show that duties which are now sustained at the dizzy height of sixty or seventy per cent., might advantageously be reduced to thirty-five or forty per cent. But mass meetings of Democratic voters, coming grimy and dusty from their crowded workshops, have warned Democratic leaders that, though Free Trade talk may be safe enough, popular rebellion waits upon any actual legislation that would substitute foreign goods largely for those of home production, and throw American workmen idle.

The alliance of Protection with Democracy is a great fact of the day, and points clearly to what the national commercial policy of the future must be. Nobody expects now to see Monarchy or Aristocracy gaining on Democracy in the world; the most devoted Tory that lives understands that political power is passing into the hands of the multitude. Philosophic students of history advise us not to brace ourselves stupidly against the inevitable, but by the extension of popular education, and other fitting means, to qualify the people for the power they are destined to wield. But if the multitude take to Protection, what future can we see for Free Trade in the world? Let Republican France and Republican America answer; and, if that be not enough, look at the advance of Protection in Canada and Australia, under virtual Democracy tempered by Imperial connection. It has been charged against Sir John A. Macdonald that he is not a sincere