yet spent its force, and the end and ultimate result of which no man can yet foresee. The opening up of new fields of production, the cheapening of manufacturing processes and of transport by sea and land through invention, the currency troubles arising out of the demonetising of silver by some of the principal nations and the tampering with the metal by others, have combined to unsettle almost everything everywhere, and to cause those who suffer by these changes to grasp at anything which seems to promise relief. During this period we have also seen an uprising of the warlike spirit, and the establishment of armaments which for vastness and costliness are unexampled in the world's history. These armaments draw away from productive labour millions of men, and call for vast sums for their maintenance, and the rulers of the greater portion of the civilised world can find no better or easier means for raising these sums than by the imposition of taxation by means of heavy duties on imports, which duties tend to become more and more protective, and consequently more and more excessive and inequitable. No wonder, therefore, that there is trade depression. Time was when these depressions recurred at intervals of something like ten years. Now, however, the cycle seems to have narrowed to from three to five years, and the thought arises that if the nations pursue much longer the path they are now treading it is possible that they will never emerge, but will have to suffer a depression which will become chronic and abiding. Like the rest of the great powers we are suffering from increasing military expenditure involving additional taxation, which, perhaps, we are rich enough to bear; but abroad there are countries to whom the burden is becoming daily more intolerable, and to whom relief can only be brought by bankruptcy or disarmament. We have also peculiar troubles of our own arising from the position we hold as the great creditor nation. Some of our debtors in Australia, the United States, and South America have failed in fulfilling their obligations; we have lost trade owing to the bad economic condition of most of our customers; our exports to the United States, for instance, are, for the six months just elapsed, £4,830,000 less than in the corresponding period last year; and we have suffered from dishonest financing at home. What we suffer, however, is but little compared with the trials of some

other nations, and to illustrate this I will advert very briefly to what is taking place in two of the richest of them: France and the United States. Trade may be bad here and employment slack, but the necessaries of life were never so plentiful and cheap as they are now. It is only the other day that bread for one of our unions was contracted for at 2d. the four-pound loaf, the lowest price previously having been 2 d.

FRANCE.

There is no such mitigation as this in France, where the price of wheat is sustained above the outside level by Protective duties, and where, as reported by the Daily News correspondent. in May, the last year's drought and the Méline tariff had at length caused a scarcity of meat which threatened, not Paris merely, but all France, with a meat famine, inferior meat costing no less than 20d. per pound. That France is suffering from excessive armaments is shown by her budget of 137 millions sterling, and the ever increasing taxation she has to submit to in order to meet the vast expense. How Protection is working is shown in a Foreign Office Report, No. 1,328, on her General Trade in 1893, presented to Parliament in February last, to which I cannot do more now than call your attention. Trade, in fact, is being driven out of the country by the Méline tariff. I read the other day that with regard to Switzerland, with whom there is a tariff war, the decrease in French imports has all along been very marked, and it now appears that many industries are likely to be transferred from French soil altogether. It is stated that one firm in the east of France, despairing of any recovery in the Swiss market, is establishing a branch manufactory in Alsace in order to get the benefit of the reduced tariff provided for in the German-Swiss treaty ; while another firm, the Decauville Company, unable to get its raw material without paying a heavy duty, is moving to Belgium, where it expects to be able to produce its goods for foreign markets 20 per cent. cheaper than is possible under French rule. The condition of affairs is fully recognised by some of her most eminent men. M. Léon Say, presiding in April last at a banquet given by persons who took part in the French section of the Chicago Exhibition, and with reference

to the disappointment experienced by French exhibitors, attributed it to their economic régime and its theoretical extravagancies, adding:

Whenever we return to our former commercial policy we shall see international exhibitions, open to our exportable products, recovering all their former value, and our manufacturers drawing from them all the profits which they formerly realised.

M. Jules Simon is another eminent Frenchman. He says:

The

M. Méline by closing our markets is as firm a supporter of the triple alliance as Bismarck or Crispi. Indolence has long been a national vice, and Protection fosters it. Industry with us is routine. The Free Trader enters the arena at his risk and peril. He is a man. strength he puts forth in his own cause profits that of his country, and of humanity, by the increase of products and the improvement of methods. The Protectionist makes the round of his ring fence to be sure that his adversary is outside it. Then, satisfied he has no rival, he sits down and supplies inferior goods to customers who cannot buy elsewhere. The consequence for him is laziness and incapacity; for his country inferiority, and in the near future defeat; and for humanity the cessation of progress and the retrogression of civilisation. Then there is M. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, who in the Economiste Français, writing on the proposed succession duties in France, condemns a plan which has been adopted by a Committee of the Chamber of Deputies. It includes no less than 119 different grades of taxation, rising to as much as 243 per cent. on the amount inherited. Even for successions in the direct line they amount to 10 per cent., and between brothers and sisters they are fixed at 17 per cent. The figures are so excessive that M. Leroy-Beaulieu protests that if acquired property be taxed to such an extent people will cease to acquire it, and the State will be the eventual sufferer from the paralysis that will supervene. Such is the condition into which France has been brought by the agency of those inseparables, War and Pro

tection.

THE UNITED STATES.

The most extraordinary spectacle, however, is that presented by the United States. Four years ago, that is in 1890, their foreign trade touched the highest figures ever reported-329 millions sterling, 20 millions more than in any previous year. Four years ago they had an overflowing treasury which showed

a surplus for the year of no less than 21 millions sterling. One would naturally think that such a condition of things would have satisfied the most exacting Protectionist. But no, it is the characteristic of the Protectionist never to be satisfied. This characteristic found expression through Mr. McKinley, the author of that outrage on civilisation, the tariff which bears his name. Speaking in Ohio, in August, 1890, and defending his Bill, he said it was framed for the people of the United States, while Mr. Mills's Bill pleased the foreigner. He predicted that if it became law, which he regarded as certain, it would bring the country prosperity unparalleled in the history of the world. Four years ago also was passed the Silver Purchase Act, under which the Treasury was compelled to buy every month 43 millions ounces of silver at the market price, United States notes being taken in exchange, which was nothing less than a compulsory addition to, and watering of, the currency to the amount of the notes issued. No bounds were set to the blessings which this measure was to bring. Gold and silver were to be kept at what was termed their parity of value. The prices of commodities, and the wages of labour, were to be maintained at a permanently high level, and every citizen was to command as much money and capital as he might require. Such was the fiscal and currency legislation of only four years ago. But in the midst of their success the Protectionists became seized with one predominant fear, the fear of what would be the consequences flowing from the existence of a gigantic surplus. The locking up in the Treasury of enormous sums drawn from the pockets of the people would, as a matter of course, contract the currency, cripple trade and industry, and draw attention to the fount and origin of the unnecessary and unjustifiable accumulation-their ultra Protection policy. Means had to be devised to get rid of this surplus without remitting one cent. of the new and increased import duties. Several modes were adopted, but I will now advert to only one of them, the principal one. The chosen field for their operations was the pension list. The pension list arose out of the civil war which ended in 1865. Twenty-four years after the cessation of that war, that is in 1889, there were on that list 373,699 invalids and 116,026 widows, &c., whatever that may mean, and the cost to the State was over 89 million

dollars, about 18 millions sterling. In 1893, that is four years later, and twenty-eight years after the close of the war, matters had been so managed in the interval that the number of invalids had swollen to 759,706, the number of widows, &c., to 206,306, while the cost to the State had risen to over 158 million dollars, about 32 millions sterling. Comment is scarcely necessary. No words of mine can adequately convey a just impression of the iniquity involved in the creation and enlargement of the most gigantic instrument of fraud and corruption ever devised by man. All this evil legislation, began at once to work, and a rapid deterioration of the condition of the people took place. In 1892 came the Presidential Election. Two years experience sufficed to show the utter hollowness of the promises made; the deluded masses turned on their authors; the Republican and Protectionist party were utterly routed at the polls, and the Democrats, with Cleveland as President, came into power pledged to upset and undo the fiscal and currency legislation of only two years previously. The prosperity which was to overflow the land as the result of that legislation was wanting. Trade grew worse and worse, production was contracted, wages were falling; not one of the promised blessings had come. I may mention that among these blessings were to be the destruction of British trade; and the detachment of Canada from the British Empire and its reception as an integral portion of the United States. And, as bearing on this, I may also mention that her Revenue statement for the fiscal year just past shows a surplus of £900,000, which may be contrasted with the 14 million deficit in the States for the same period. In 1893 the crash came. The Silver Purchase Act was rapidly pulling down the currency to a silver basis, confidence was destroyed, and, in consequence, foreign capital was withdrawn, and gold left the country in vast amounts. The McKinley Act was all this time doing its share of work. Production was curtailed, factories were shut up, furnaces went out of blast, every industry was crippled, and many of the railroads presented, and still present, a spectacle of financial ruin, no less than about one-sixth of the total mileage, representing a capitalisation in bonds and stocks of about 350 millions sterling, having, since the 1st January, 1893, up to the present date, passed from the control