the "Science of Social Opulence," a work favoring free trade, published in 1856. But this ghost of a blunder so long buried was produced afresh as a valid argument in M. Bastiat's "Sophisms of Protection," translated for the instruction of the American public under the auspices of "The American Free-Trade League."

A large proportion, however, of American converts to free trade become so really through influences which are quite natural and amiable, but which are perfectly innocent of logic. A vast host of wealthy and cultivated persons every year visit Great Britain, where they find almost every man, woman, and child a free-trade missionary, ready to tenderly influence and instruct their less fortunate cousins from the western side of the Atlantic. Every man, woman, and child is completely possessed with the conviction that political economy is already a science, but one, alas! only understood in England. Our ignorance is gently forgiven, our wayward perversity is borne with, any wavering in our convictions is greeted with encouragement and suitable applause, any symptoms of actual conversion are received with unmeasured caresses. The stateliest doors fly open to the truly repentant protectionist; and the highest talent of the land can find time to pause approvingly and to recognize that the individual who, having been born in utter darkness, can still thus bare his eyes to the almost overpowering glare of truth, must possess not only a good heart, but also a commanding intellect! A large portion of the beliefs and opinions of men are rather, as it were, inhaled or absorbed from the social atmosphere around them, than arrived at by any process of reason. We find it easy and pleasant to agree with those who treat us with delicacy and attention, and almost anything seems logical which brings us into accord with the great, the wise, and the good. We do not reflect that Bacon, in his time, could not easily have avoided believing in witchcraft; that Samuel Johnson was ready to be scared out of his wits by reports of a ghost; and that the present opinion of Mr. Gladstone or other great thinkers and scholars in favor of free trade has intrinsically no more value than had theirs in favor of the

beliefs which the world has now so entirely outgrown. The universality of an opinion is so far from being proof of its correctness, that it should rather inspire a fear of error, fear that only one side of the question had been heard.

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It is really curious to observe the unanimity with which our English cousins believe themselves masters of political economy; but one of themselves, an author who has made valuable additions to the materials of political economy, declares, in reference to Great Britain, that

"Political economy is little understood, even by educated men. A few of its doctrines, indeed, those, for example, relating to the division of labor and free trade, — have taken their place in the familiar philosophy of Western Europe. Men learn them, however, by rote, not by study."

But the traveller is not aware of this. He is in contact continually with free-trade opinions, and gradually acquires them by contact or by infection, just as he would catch the small-pox or a malarial fever; and, in this condition of mind, he returns, to be vexed and worried and made to pay out money by the custom-house authorities. Here personal irritation comes in to complete the conversion. He sees very clearly what he has to pay; he does not see by any means so clearly that the ample income which made his travels possible had sprung from the system of which the custom-house annoyances were a necessary portion. He becomes a hater of all tariffs, as obstructions to intercourse, and a ready listener to such sophistries as the following, put forth by Mr. David A. Wells since his conversion to free trade during a visit to England. He says, in his "Creed of Free-Trade: "

"The highest right of property is the right to freely exchange it for other property. Any system of laws which denies or restricts this right, for the purpose of subserving private or class interests, reaffirms in effect the principle of slavery. Whatever facilitates or cheapens the interchange of commodities or services-good roads, the locomotive, the steamship, or the telegraph - promotes abundance, and consequently the aggregate of human comfort and happiness. Whatever, on the other hand, restricts or makes costly the exchange of commodi

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ties or services - be it in the nature of bad roads, high mountains, tempestuous oceans, swamps, deserts, or restrictive laws - increases scarcity, and consequently the aggregate of human poverty and discomfort."

This seems admirable reasoning to one whose preconceived opinions are all in favor of free trade. Let us see whether it

is so.

The first sentence contains a proposition altogether foreign to political economy, which concerns itself solely with questions relating to social opulence. This proposition belongs to the domain of law and to the domain of social science, of which political economy is only a portion, a portion in which this question has no place. That it is dragged into a discussion regarding free trade shows a consciousness of weakness. But a lawyer or a professor of social science would meet with a smile the assertion that "the right of every possessor of property to exchange it for other property is so full, universal, and sacred, that the whole community must abstain from any regulation thereof " !

Even if the pecuniary interests of some individuals were injured, these ought to give way to the interests of the whole community; and to liken such pecuniary interests or rights to the rights to life and liberty invaded by slavery, is a monstrous sophism. The insinuation that the restriction of the right of exchange by protection is made in order to subserve private or class interests, is to carry the discussion entirely out of the domain of truth, as the whole aim and object of protection is to increase the total annual product for the benefit of the community as a whole. That good roads, the locomotive, the steamship, and the telegraph promote abundance in all cases is not true. They promote abundance when they are restricted to beneficent exchanges; they promote scarcity when used to carry on a commerce which, after destroying our means of helping ourselves, can only give us a fifth or a tenth of what we enjoyed before. We have a natural advantage in producing cotton, tobacco, wheat, and a few other products which are salable abroad; but the market for these products is not sufficiently great, nor can it become sufficiently great,

to warrant the employing upon them one-half our present or a fourth of the population we shall have in 1905. To endeavor to confine ourselves to these would be to transfer the whole of our natural advantages to the foreigner, and to reduce ourselves to the condition of Ireland, Turkey, India, and other countries which are prevented from helping themselves and compelled to look to England for mechanical and manufactured products. This is an eminently practical question, upon which the rhetorical sentences quoted from Mr. Wells have no bearing whatsoever. The following is equally irrelevant. He says:

"In the absence of all freedom of exchange between man and man, civilization would obviously be impossible; and it would seem to stand to reason that to the degree in which we impede or obstruct the freedom of exchange, — or, what is the same thing, commercial intercourse, - to that same degree we oppose the development of civilization."

But this is reasoning from a "particular" proposition as if it were universal. Some exchanges are necessary conditions of civilization, but others may be highly prejudicial to civilization; there may be many exchanges which must be suppressed in order to reach the highest civilization. The suppression of some foreign exchanges may bring into existence many times the number of more advantageous exchanges at home.

Mr. Wells thinks it strange that the American people, who insist upon free trade among themselves, should object to free trade with foreign countries, and thinks that "foreign trade presents no element peculiar to itself."

This is a strange assertion. It would seem that foreign trade is subject to foreign legislation, and not to domestic legislation; that foreign trade is especially liable to interruption from war; that foreign trade (especially with England and Europe) is more distant as to markets; that foreign trade is carried on with nations having very different conditions of production, and having both the will and the ability to greatly injure and even crush our industries by

selling products at a loss, for the very purpose of driving us from our own markets and then making us pay high prices. It would seem that an exchange with the foreigner provokes only one production, where a domestic exchange provokes two; and that this alone is of supreme importance, inasmuch as the whole price of everything produced constitutes net individual income to somebody, as is proved by J. B. Say.

Volumes could be filled with examples of the errors committed by economists of the English school in their deductive reasoning. We have seen that Mr. J. S. Mill, who gave the world an admirable treatise upon the science of logic, could yet amaze his own scholars by giving them one of the best possible specimens of the fallacy called "Changing the Premises," and thus arrive at a false conclusion upon a vital question in political economy. Both he and Professor Cairnes, we have seen, apply to commodities the argumentation which is only true with respect to all values, of which commodities form only a small portion. By this error they come to the conclusion that a glut is impossible, — a conclusion which is contrary to fact, and contradicted by all correct deductive reasoning. Every economist of the English school enjoins upon us to buy in the cheapest market with some portion of our own products in raising which we have an advantage. We reply, that the products in which we have an advantage are not salable abroad to an extent which would pay for one-third part of the other products that we now make for ourselves. We are 50,000,000, we say, and require, and actually obtain and enjoy, annually, commodities produced by the mechanical and manufacturing arts of the value of at least $4,000,000,000. In twenty-five years we shall be 100,000,000; and, if we continue the protective policy, we shall no doubt then annually obtain and enjoy similar commodities to the value of $10,000,000,000,- a sum equal to about three times the total annual consumption of the British Islands, of which consumption, be it noted, only a small fraction could, under any possible circumstances, be taken from the United States. Great Britain cannot supply our wants; but she can, and, if we will allow her to do so,