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 will be shown in more detail in subsequent pages, the further closing of markets against us throughout the world. It would mean that the competitive power of the protected countries would be further promoted by free access to our market, while our manufacturing position would be further weakened by more effectual exclusion from theirs. It would mean their more rapid attainment of supremacy in man-power and money-power. It would mean that the example of our European rivals would be imitated elsewhere. What may still be called the neutral markets, like Japan and Argentina, would model their commercial policy upon that of the United States and Germany. Above all, it would mean in the Colonies the rise of McKinleyism pure and simple, and the gradual development of a definitely separatist ideal, with the rejection by the Mother Country of the only condition upon which a closer union with the Colonies is possible.

Nor is there any reason why Free Traders in principle should not be supporters in practice of constructive Imperialism in the only possible economic shape. It is of the first importance to make this clear. It is still generally assumed that Adam Smith and Cobden must be accepted or rejected together. No opinion could be more profoundly or more demonstrably mistaken. The question of the maintenance of the Empire is a politico-economic problem which, if it is to be usefully treated, must be regarded neither from the point of view of the ordinary party-political controversialist, nor from that of the doctrinaire economist of any school. No rigidly pedantic theories of any kind will help us in dealing with the most complex and plastic political organism the world has yet known. the English spirit of compromise, which has contrived to steer a clear course between the falsehood of extremes in every other relation of life, has never yet found its economic expression. To arrive at this expression we have not to abjure the teachings of Adam Smith: we have only to return to them. We have not to reject Cobden and Adam