interested opposition, no one who sees how irresistibly the wave of progress is rolling onward throughout the world, can for a moment doubt. To sum up, the truth is that THE MOMENT THE MASS OF THE PEOPLE IN ALL COUNTRIES SHALL BECOME AWARE THAT PROTECTION TAXES THE MANY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE FEW, FREE TRADE WILL BECOME UNIVERSAL.

14. England, which alone has adopted Free Trade, has not prospered under it, and is living on her former capital. Both statements are the reverse of true. As to the first, the marvellous expansion of England's prosperity and wealth within the last thirty years is so notorious, and has been so clearly, amply, and conclusively shown by statistical records, that it is mere waste of time to dwell upon it. The great wonder to us is that any man should be found so blind as not to recognise, or so bold as to deny, the fact. As to the second, the only ground on which the statement is based is the permanent excess of our imports over our exports—a fact which, far from proving, effectually disproves the statement that England "is living on her former capital." For, as we have before put it, how can receiving a hundred millions per annum more from abroad than we send away be a cause of impoverishment? Or, rather, how can it be other than a splendid and continuous accession to our wealth and capital?

It is said that this excess of imports has been partly paid for by the redemption of American Government bonds, and that consequently the indebtedness of the world to England is to that

THE WORLD'S INDEBTEDNESS TO ENGLAND. 215

extent less. Let us examine this assertion. It is quite true that the United States have paid off a portion of their national debt, some of which was held in England; and all honour be to them for it! But how can the creditable liquidation of their debts prove a source of impoverishment and diminution of capital to us? "They now owe us less," is your feeble moan. Why not? How can it be a loss and a grievance to you that a high-minded debtor should take the earliest opportunity of repaying what he owes you? If it be an injury to you to have solvent debtors, then long live the Turks and Egyptians! As regards them, you will ever be free from the nuisance of having the world's indebtedness to you diminished. But how the repayment of a loan can injure a creditor passes conception. Because our Anglo-Saxon brethren in the other hemisphere have repaid a portion of their national debt, does it follow that the aggregate indebtedness of the world to you (on which you lay such stress) has diminished? Not at all. Both in financial circles and on the Stock Exchange (the best and indeed the only authorities on the subject) the verdict is (1) that a larger sum than has been repaid to us by the United States in one form has, during the same period, been invested by us in other American securities, and (2) that, in addition, England has been year by year making fresh loans to and large investments in other countries (chiefly her own colonies). The result is-and it will relieve the fears of our timorous friends to know it-that the present indebtedness to England of the world at large is greater than it has ever

been before. Paying us off is a very rare operation; borrowing from us a very frequent one.

There are also other proofs patent to every one who looks around him that, far from England's living on her capital, that capital is yearly increasing at a rapid rate; for it is accumulating before his eyes. Every year the fixed capital of the country is, visibly and tangibly, receiving a vast accession by the construction of new dwellinghouses, new ships, new factories, new railways, new harbours, new docks, new warehouses, &c., &c., of which the aggregate value is enormous. Every year vast sums are invested in new commercial enterprises, both at home and abroad. Every year our population increases at the rate of about 1,000 a day; while food, clothing, lodging, &c., are more casily and abundantly supplied to them than ever, for pauperism has decreased 19 per cent. since 1870. And it is in the face of these facts that we are told that England is living on her capital! Out of what fund, then, if not from our annual savings (excess of income over expenditure), does the money come to provide these enormous annual additions to our national wealth? To sum up, the truth is that UNDER FREE TRADE ENGLAND HAS ACCUMULATED WEALTH WITH UNPRECEDENTED RAPIDITY, AND IS YEARLY MAKING VERY LARGE ADDITIONS TO HER CAPITAL.

We might indefinitely prolong this list of Protectionist fallacies, but we will rest content with those given as being the most important, the most plausible, and the most frequently used. These once clearly understood, refuted, and put on one

"ERRORS FOR THE AVOIDANCE OF MANKIND." 217

side, with the label "errors for the avoidance of mankind" affixed thereto, the remaining numerous but minute fry of Protectionist mistakes will lose their significance and wither away, as leaves do when the branch that bears them is lopped off. Truth alone is undecaying and eternal.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Why Free Trade is not yet universally adopted—Ignorance and Immorality-Their connection with Poverty.

We have now said enough to show how grievous an impediment to the process of wealth-creation is that "commercial isolation" which the theory of protection recommends, and which its practice enforces. We do not contend that, by such isolation, production is totally arrested, but only that it is seriously checked-just as we do not contend that grain cannot be threshed by a flail, but only that it will be far more quickly and thoroughly threshed by a machine. But this check to production, arising as it does from the mis-direction (and therefore waste) of human energies, largely curtails the creation, and therefore the distribution among us all, of those "objects of human desire as are obtained or produced by human exertions" which we call wealth. Man's productive energies properly directed, or, what is the same thing, self-directed, achieve their maximum results; whereas, when state-directed

their natural aptitudes are ignored, they are set to state-supported, not self-supporting, tasks, and their efficiency is largely impaired. Hence a heavy deficiency in wealth-production, by which the people, and especially the labour-sellers, are the chief sufferers. How it is that this pernicious impediment to wealth-creation is still suffered to exist we have elsewhere explained, but the topic deserves a few further remarks. Why is a removable evil not removed?

The only country, so far, that has substituted Free Trade for Protection is England; and as the experiment has there proved successful beyond all anticipation, it was natural to expect that other countries would follow her example. At present they have not. Why? Certainly not because those men in every country who have studied the subject entertain the least doubt of the truth of Free Trade principles. There is universal consensus among the experts. There does not exist a single serious and argumentative work on the other side. Science is unanimous. Now and then there appear a few newspaper articles, speeches, and short, scanty pamphlets, in which political economists are reviled but not refuted; but there is no systematic treatise in which the principles of Protection are explained and demonstrated. Why, then, this practical adherence to exploded errors? Simply because the few protected producers object to have their monopolies disturbed, while the many injured consumers are not sufficiently alive to the fact that these monopolies are maintained at their expense. If the mass of the people did but