Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/794

 758 FREE TRADE European powers, and in tlie-forms of European government. Still the Thirty Years War was a struggle between anarchy and despotism, interminable disunion and forcible unity, and could appeal to some noble passions in the midst of a mass of ignoble aims, to some generous purposes in the con fusion of a host of sordid and mean impulses. But wars for the monopoly of trade and production have done nothing but mischief, have not been varied by any worthy purpose, have been, as Adam Smith described them with honest energy and undeniable truth, mean and malignant. Not much better is the temper which carries on a furtive war against the general industry and the general good of man kind under the spurious name of a patriotic protection. But it must be admitted that no tendency of civilized societies is so inveterate, because none is defended with more ingenious and more unconscious sophistry, and none appears to be more necessary for the maintenance of existing interests. Nations accommodate themselves, but with losses which may be easily described, though they cannot perhaps be numerically calculated, to protective restraints on trade. But it is a penalty on having been in the right that any depart ure from the right into the wrong is more mischievous than it ia to remain in the wrong. The people of England are, as far as manufactures and trade are concerned, fairly commit ted to free trade. The world admits that England has pros pered under free trade ; indeed, it is difficult to deny the fact, and equally difficult to assert that the prosperity which the country has reached has been achieved in spite of free trade. It might be shown that the very circumstances which, thirty years ago or more, were adduced as condi tions under which free trade would be ruinous to England have now been alleged in order to explain why it has been exceptionally beneficial. The growth of population lias given a practical refutation to the alarms of Malthus, though it has not rebutted and could not rebut the abstract principles on which that theory was founded. The repeal of the corn laws has modified the Kicardian theory of rent, and has reduced it to the explanation of the cause which measures the difference between the rent paid for the same superficial extent in two pieces of ground. The same fact has been a cure for the currency crazes which the old sliding scale used to foster, for the notion that we might be im poverished by a drain of gold, and for the dread that the country would be ruined if the balance value in the imports exceeded that of the exports. A thousand economical fallacies still dominant in the minds of those who are in the darkness of protection have been dissipated in the light of free trade. The English people were, as far as the funda mental principles of social economy were concerned, in the cave of Plato, mistaking shadows for realities, and con strained to get their impression of the shadow from the false mirror of an artificial system. But free trade has put English industry into the daylight, and with the daylight the country has gradually become familiar. More or less violent reconstructions of society, the socialism with which much of civilized Europe is pestered, the paternal theory of govern ment in its most grotesque form under which the American republic attempts to control and distribute the occupation of its free citizens, aro to Englishmen as extinct as the animal worship of Egypt, the nature worship of Greece, and the other strange beliefs which have been popular in the infancy of the world and of its knowledge. That English trade and manufactures are open to dangers which may check or diminish theirprosperity must be admitted, but thosedangers are of a totally different kind from those which menace the progress of such countries as imagine that protection is a safeguard. The great advantage which free trade has bestowed on English manufacture consists in the fact that it has enabled the producer to interpret accurately the cost of production, and therefore to discover the prospect which his industry has of a remunerative market. It is superfluous to protect an industry which is strong enough to assert itself in the rivalry of competition. It is similarly superfluous to pro tect an industry the products of which, by reason of their bulk and cheapness, are shielded frum competition by the costs of carrying the same products from foreign parts, or even from remote districts within the same political system. It may be inferred, therefore, that protection is not demanded except in cases where the industry would be exposed to the dangerous or successful rivalry of the foreign manufacturer, and therefore is carried on under circumstances which, by increasing the cost of production, render the employment of labour and capital on the industry in question a less advantageous outlay than they could be in other objects. If it comes to pass that under favourable circumstances the protected industry can cope with unprotected rivals in a common market, it is clear that the necessity for protection has passed away, and that the existence of the restraint is needless and vexatious. Thus, for example, if it be true that American cotton cloth can successfully compete against Manchester goods in China, or Japan, or Central Africa, it can, a fortiori, compete successfully against Manchester goods in the United States themselves. But it also follows that, if this position be not attained, the existence of the restraint is a constant impediment to its being attained, because the industry, as estimated by the cost at which its product is attained, invariably accommodates itself to the circumstances which naturally or artificially control its pro duction, especially in reference to the amount of capital and labour devoted to it, and the rate of profit which the manu facturer enjoys. There is no reason to believe that in the protected manufactures of Germany, France, and the United States the profit of the manufacturers is greater than is de rived from unprotected industries,- that, for example, the French ironmaster or cotton-spinner gains a greater advan tage from his calling than the wine-grower does. On the contrary, the loudest complaints of declining trade, and the baneful influence of foreign rivalry, are heard from the in dustries which have successfully demanded the assistance of protective duties. It is always the case, and it always will be the case, that the opulence and prosperity of a country will depend on the success with which its natural industries are prosecuted, and on the prudence which it shows in hitting the proper time in which other industries may be attempted with a reasonable prospect of renmnera- tive profit. For just as weakly plants and animals are the first to succumb to those climatal or atmospheric conditions which are unfavourable to health and vigour, as in the struggle for existence feeble stocks disappear and more energetic forms occupy their place, so industries which need artificial support are the first to feel commercial adversity, and the last to recover from it. It is stated, and the state ment is not seriously controverted, however much the true interpretation of the facts is disguised or resisted, that during the period of commercial depression which began after 1874 the countries in which the greatest efforts have been made to sustain artificial industries have suffered more than England, which has conceded no such assistance what ever. But it is not only in the fact that the producer is able in an atmosphere of free action to interpret the pros pects of his own market best, and to solve most readily the problem as to what is the relation between cost of produc tion and possible profit, that the value of free-trade prin ciples is discerned. The same principles which in England have been happily recognized as fundamental have indirectly done more to soften the differences between employer and labourer than anything else. No civilized country has had