Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/113

 out foreign competition is permanent; it locks up capital and labour in industries where they are comparatively unproductive, and thus detracts from the industrial efficiency of the nation. One sometimes hears the expression, when a person is doing work for which he is obviously unfitted, "It is like putting a race-horse to plough." The exclusion of foreign competition, or the "protection of native industry," as it is called, generally means a process very like setting a race-horse to plough. The poor creature cannot plough as well as a bullock; but the bullock is a foreigner, so we will have none of his ploughing, and we will put a heavy tax on all land ploughed by bullocks, in order that the race-horse may always continue to do the work for which he is so ill suited.

The islanders had come face to face with the question of "protection to native industry" when the plantain groves were discovered. The free-traders, then, had carried the day; and now that the question was raised again by the