Page:The reciprocity craze.djvu/14

 {|
 * Ocean carrying trade|||£45,000,000
 * Insurance|||3,500,000
 * Interest on capital|||5,000,000
 * Merchants' profits|||17,500,000
 * Income from foreign investments|||55,000,000
 * |||£126,000,000
 * }
 * Income from foreign investments|||55,000,000
 * |||£126,000,000
 * }
 * |||£126,000,000
 * }

Which means simply this—that before England has to exchange a pound's worth of her own products for a pound's worth of foreign products, she has to receive annually, in some shape or other, over 100 million pounds from the foreigner!

And thus bursts the bubble of our adverse balance of trade! The balance, if there be such a thing, seems to be the other way! And it must be the other way.

It is a matter of common knowledge, or ought to be, that year by year, on the whole, the world grows more and more indebted to us. Year by year we have more and more of the world's obligations in our strong box.

The fallacy under which our Neo-Protectionists labour lies in the terms "buying of the foreigner," "selling to the foreigner."

They fancy that our imports are what we "buy" and our exports what we "sell;" and, that as there is an excess of the former there is a balance of trade against us, which, somehow or other, out of our wealth, we have to liquidate, and that this process impoverishes the country.

But, as I have shown, there is no balance to liquidate, so there can be no impoverishment; and so their argument is exploded.

But, let us for a moment look at their supposition in another light. Why should the bare fact of our importing 411 millions of commodities in exchange for 286 millions be held, ipso facto, to involve a loss?

To get in more than one gives out seems, primâ facie, to ordinary minds, the only way of making a profit! It cannot be pretended that Great Britain stood indebted at the end of 1880 for the excess of imports. There can be no doubt that at that period the world was as much, if not more, indebted to her than at the end of 1879.

But 1880 does not stand alone in its excess of imports. The same thing has gone on for the last thirty-five years.