Page:Karl Marx - Wage Labor and Capital - tr. Harriet E. Lothrop (1902).djvu/69



the end of 1847, a Free Trade Congress was held at Brussels. It was a strategic move in the free trade campaign then carried on by the English manufacturers. Victorious at home by the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, they now invaded the Continent in order to demand, in return for the free admission of continental corn into England, the free admission of English manufactured goods to the continental markets. At this Congress, Marx inscribed himself on the list of speakers; but, as might have been expected, things were so managed that before his turn came on, the Congress was closed. Thus, what Marx had to say on the free trade question, he was compelled to say before the Democratic Association of Brussels, an international body of which he was one of the vice-presidents.

The question of free trade or protection being at present on the order of the day in America, it has been thought useful to publish an English translation of Marx's speech, to which I have been asked to write an introductory preface.

"The system of protection," says Marx, "was an artificial means of manufacturing manufacturers, of expropriating independent laborers, of capitalizing the national means of production and subsistence, and of