Page:Democratic Ideals and Reality (1919).djvu/242

230 you have exhausted these two categories, you will find that you might just as well have adopted the attractive positive ideal of general economic independence instead of being driven from one expedient to another in mere defensiveness. If you attempt to maintain a negative Cobdenism with exceptions, you will, under the conditions of the world that are opening before us, very soon build up a large and clumsy body of merely ad hoc machineries. A general system of low duties and bounties would enable you to deal quickly and lightly with each difficulty as it develops, because you would have the appropriate machinery of control at your hand. But I am not here going into the detail of these questions of machinery; I am dealing with the question of ideal and aim. The Cobdenite believes that international trade is good in itself, and that specialisation as between country and country, provided that