city for conceiving thoughts concerning God which no other creature has. The proposition is almost a truism: no one for a moment would dream of attributing the possibility of religious feeling to an animal however high in the scale. But what a magnificent truism it is! It is not even necessary for my present purpose to postulate the truth of God's being: the question is only of the possibility of framing thoughts concerning such a being as God is conceived to be. A poet is not judged by the literal truth of his representations: he may exhibit the grandest powers that he possesses in the region of pure and absolute fiction; and so, putting aside if one can for a moment the question of the actual truth of God's existence, the fact that man's mind has been able to rise to the conception of a being omniscient, almighty, which was and is and is to come,' the first cause of all created things, and the loving father of all that lives

this fact is sufficient to difference the mind of man by an absolutely impassable gulf from all that can be called mind in the lower levels of the living world.

And having reached this point I feel as if we had attained an eminence upon which we may 'rest and be thankful,' while calmly contemplating mightier heights still, to climb which might take us into an atmosphere more distinctly theological than would befit the character of this essay.

HARVEY CARLISLE.

THE

NINETEENTH

CENTURY.

No. LIV.-AUGUST 1881.

ISOLATED FREE TRADE.

I.

I THINK few people are now inclined to deny that there is a very strong reaction in public opinion about free trade.

To the great majority of Englishmen it is no longer what the worship of Brahma is to the priestly caste in India, a matter for devout contemplation only, far too sacred for discussion, but under the name of Reciprocity, Retaliation, Protection, Fair Trade, it is discussed right and left in a very critical spirit; and, what is worse, common sense is leading the opposition.

There is a very general suspicion that political economy is not one of the exact sciences, invariable in its rules and results, but a tentative science that varies and changes in every industrial community in the world.

It is very well to say that a man must have the courage of a fool to advocate a return to protection, but, on the other hand, there are many who think that in the face of the experience of the last six years it requires more of that particular kind of courage to nail to the mast the insular flag of free trade than to hoist the cosmopolitan flag of protection!

I believe it is now generally allowed that every prophecy uttered by the apostles of free trade thirty years ago is unfulfilled, or has proved false; and to my mind ridicule attaches rather to those who VOL. X.-No. 54.

M

continue to repeat these false prophecies than to those who expose their hollowness. In 1844 Mr. Cobden said: "You have no more right to doubt that the sun will rise in the heavens to-morrow than you have to doubt that, in less than ten years from the time when England inaugurates the glorious era of commercial freedom, every civilised commercial community will be free traders to the backbone.'

In 1852 he said that the time was at hand when other nations would be compelled by self-interest and by the reality of our prosperity to follow our example and adopt free trade.' About the same time Mr. Disraeli said in the House of Commons: The time will come when the working classes of England will come to you on bended knees and pray you to undo your present legislation.' Which prophet, may I ask, now in 1881, has proved himself most worthy of our trust?

The cloud that threatens the industrial existence of England has been gathering and intensifying for six years. The extraordinary growth and development of agricultural and manufacturing prosperity in Europe and America have entirely changed her industrial position.

Thirty years ago England had almost a monopoly of the manufacturing industries of the world: she produced everything in excess of her consumption; other nations comparatively nothing. The world was obliged to buy from her, because it could not buy anywhere else. The discoveries of gold and steam immensely increased the demands and the purchasing power of the world, and consequently the demand for the products of England. Her wealth increased by leaps and bounds that were bewildering; she was intoxicated with success with her immense accumulated wealth, her machinery, her coal, her iron, her insular position, she thought herself unassailable; she laughed at the possibility of foreign competition; she offered to fight the rest of the world with her right hand tied behind her back; she said to the world, 'I will receive anything you can send me without duty,' adding at the same time an expression of hope that they would in turn receive her goods. But they said, 'No! we gladly avail ourselves of your kind offer of admitting our goods; certainly we will send you all we possibly can. At present, unfortunately, we have nothing to send: we cannot yet supply our own wants; but when we have more capital, and your machinery and workmen, we hope to have a large surplus to send you.' Well, that was thirty years ago; now France and America and Belgium have got our machinery and our workmen and ample capital, and they are sending us a yearly increasing surplus that is driving our own goods out of our own markets; and every year they are more completely closing their markets to our goods.

Thirty years ago England acted exactly like a man who has a manor overstocked with game, who says to his neighbours all round, "I have plenty of game, more than I want, and I shall be very happy

to let you shoot over it whenever you like, and of course you will let me shoot over your manors in return.' But the neighbours said, "How kind of you; we will shoot over your manor with pleasure and kill as much of your game as we can; but as for allowing you to shoot over our manors in return, no! We are sorry we cannot do that; we have no game to spare, and what we have we preserve strictly for our own shooting!' Well, that was thirty years ago; in the meantime our neighbours have shot down our game very close: whereas, by strictly preserving their own manors, they have an immense head of game themselves. And now again we ask for a share of it. Our game is getting short,' we say, 'but yours has immensely increased; let us shoot over your manors (give us a share of your consumption).' But our neighbours still say, no! They say more: they say, 'What fools you are to complain about our shooting your game! We never asked you to let us do so: you offered it of your own free will, and we told you distinctly at the time that you must not expect us to do the same to you.'

Now, whether the reaction against isolated free trade is reasonable, or whether it is merely the 'revival of working men's prejudices,' as the leading journal tells us, it exists, and it is growing with a rapidity and with an intensity that surprise many even of those best acquainted with the operative class.

The organisation of the working classes is very complete, and very strong, and at this moment the whole of it is being concentrated on this point. Already a number of operatives, far more than is necessary to turn a general election, have through their delegates given in their adherence to the Fair Trade League.

The working men are not working out the question by the abstract reasoning of others, but by their own experience; they know nothing of political economy, but they know what were the promises of the apostles of free trade, and they know what are the results. Bankers and brokers and dealers in stocks and importers of foreign manufactures may tell them that they are fools, and don't know when they are well off; that may be so, but they know when they are badly off, and they are badly off now!

The reports of their delegates state that a very large proportion of the operative population of Great Britain (they put it at onethird) is out of work; that the rest have not, on an average, more than four days' work a week; that for five or six years they have been consuming their savings and the funds of their trade societies. One rich trade society has paid no less than 200,000l. in work pay during the last five years, and reduced its capital to less than 100,000l.

Whatever the wealth of the country may be, it has not penetrated down to them every year this wealth is accumulating into fewer hands; every year the gulf between rich and poor becomes deeper and

broader. It is calculated that there are at this moment 14,500,000 of the people with less than 108. 6d. a week to live on. The operatives look abroad, and they see and hear from their mates what is the condition of national wealth in France and America, and they find the very reverse is the case: that there the fertilising stream has descended to all classes; that wealth is daily becoming more generally distributed, that every year the gulf between rich and poor is getting narrower and shallower. They see and hear that the operatives in France and America have far steadier work, higher wages in proportion, and are increasing more rapidly in material prosperity than the workpeople of Great Britain, and they are beginning to ask why. They know that they are, man for man, as good as their rivals; that in mechanical skill, in aptitude for hard work, in mineral wealth, in national capital, &c., they are their superiors. Why, then, are they not equally advancing in material prosperity?

The stock arguments of the big loaf, the natural antagonism between producers and consumers, between employers and employed, &c., &c., have been disproved by the rate and reality of the American progress.

'I can hardly allow myself to believe,' said Lord Derby, that America will long maintain at the public expense a privileged class of manufacturers and producers.' But the American people laugh at this; they know that every prosperous manufacturer means a hundred or two of prosperous workmen, and every ruined manufacturer one or two hundred ruined workmen ; that if the employer is losing money, the employed cannot be making it more than this, they understand that manufacturing and agricultural industries are inseparably bound up together, that prosperous manufactures mean prosperous agriculture, and vice versâ; that each consumes what the other produces; that each is the best customer of the other.

'How long,' re-echoes the Cobden Club, will the farmers of America allow protection to add to the cost of what they consume?'. 'So long as protection adds to the value of what they produce,' is the reply.

The western and southern farmers find that the protected manufacturers, instead of being their enemies, are their best customers; they are attracting them to their region by every means in their power: the more prosperous they are, the more money they have to spend, the more good they do them.

Chicago, the capital of agricultural America, is rapidly becoming one of the largest manufacturing states in the Union.

In every matter relating to international trade the Liberals and Radicals and Republicans of Europe and America have taken the exactly opposite view of the Liberals, Radicals, and Republicans of England. Mr. Bright denounces those who advocate a return to protection as fools, lunatics, stupid Tories, &c. But this is Mr. Bright's