time that we are consuming the interest of the rest, in exchange for the produce of foreign labour.1 But the Professor saw no reason to complain of such a state of things. We acquired capital, or the representative of capital, in bygone ages. That was a sign of prosperity. But now we are not even paying for our imports with the produce of present labour; we are consuming capital; and this is called also a sign of prosperity. But what says the labouring interest of the country? "Foreign exchanges have come to affect the capitalist's interests: those who can afford to pay acquire commodities at the cheapest possible price, but they pay not the labour of this country but that of a foreign one. But we could, and did under protection, (and under protection trade was made as free as it could be made, with reference to surrounding conditions), produce all those, or most of those, foreign commodities we now consume at the expense of the national labour. The interest of consumers no longer reaches to us exclusively. And the consequence is, that part of our productive sources are disused. How, then, can we consume if we do not produce? So far as one part of the community is concerned, and it is that part of the labouring community which is thrown out of employment by foreign competition, cheap bread has no more virtue than dear bread, if we cannot earn a due and proper wage."

But as regards those who are employed, can they be

1 The twofold process must not be forgotten, in spite of plausible free-trade assertions. Undoubtedly we consume the interest of our foreign investments. This does not, however, preclude the possibility of spending some part of our capital invested abroad.

said to be in any better position (in that position, for instance, which Cobden expected they would be placed), when the proportion of their wages expended on necessary articles of consumption is the same or a little more than under the old system of protection? Add to this that their rents have increased. And yet another item; that competition amongst themselves, owing to a constantly decreasing demand for their labour, has reduced their wages to the lowest point. And then inquire what caused this untoward alteration in the demand for their labour? What disturbed the balance of population in town and country?1 And what made their rents to rise?

Cobden complained in his day, that the agricultural labourer, after the payment of all his expenses, had but little to spend upon luxuries and sight-seeing. Exactly the same description applies to the town labourer of today. But Cobden did not complain that they were unemployed; he desired that their wages should be relatively higher. We complain now that they are unemployed; and that the cheap bread which Cobden was the principal means 2 of acquiring for them, has also been accompanied with a gradual, insidious, and therefore all the more treacherous, deprivation of the sources of their employment. For when the springs of employment are slowly destroyed, the process of destruction is apt to remain unobserved, except by those who trace the tendencies in operation to effect it. A cause acting gradually produces not a sharp and sudden explosion, as was

1 See table at the end of chapter.

2 He was the head of an organisation supported by the gold of the manufacturers.

the case of trade depressions under protection. It is, on this account, that in social and commercial phenomena, because we become accustomed to the slow accumulation of effects, we are inclined to think that nothing is wrong. For the reason that there is no obvious sign.

It is the prevention of this further accumulation of these adverse effects which leads all those who have the true interests of the whole nation at heart to display their real causes and urge their counteraction.

TABLE showing how balance of population between town and country has not been preserved by free trade, from W. W. Good, 'Economical Fallacies' (1866), pp. 377, 378. The figures for 1871 are from Kolb, loc. cit., pp. 37 and 45.

"Exclude from Berkshire, Reading; from Essex, Colchester, Brentwood, Stratford, West and East Ham; from Lincolnshire, Lincoln, Stamford, and Boston; and Norwich, which increased 15,000 (18541864), from Norfolk ;-and the result does not exceed an increase of three per cent, if there is any at all."

269

CHAPTER XIII.

PARTIAL FREE TRADE AND THE PRODUCTIVE SOURCES OF THE NATION-THE SUPPOSED CONFLICT BETWEEN MANUFACTURE AND AGRICULTURE HAS BEEN TURNED INTO A STRUGGLE BETWEEN PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION.

"With downcast eyes the joyless victor sate,
Revolving in his altered soul

The various turns of chance below."

-DRYDEN.

THE RELATION BETWEEN THE PRICES OF CORN AND MEAT UNDER
PROTECTION DESTROYED BY FREE TRADE-FREE TRADE PULLED
DOWN ONE MONOPOLY TO BUILD ANOTHER-THE FINAL PROBLEM
66
TO BE CONSIDERED IS, DOES FREE TRADE CONDUCE TO OUR SELF-
INTEREST FROM (1) THE MATERIAL, (2) POLITICAL ASPECTS?"-
ANSWERED DIFFERENTLY BY NATIONS, ACCORDING TO THE NATURE
OF THEIR SURROUNDINGS-THE TENDENCY OF PARTIAL FREE TRADE
TO REDUCE WAGES OF UNSKILLED LABOUR-THE DOCTRINE THAT
BEING ABLE TO EMPLOY FOREIGN LABOUR IS SIGNIFICANT OF OUR

cc PROSPERITY," APPLICABLE TO "LUXURIES ONLY, AND NOT TO (6 NECESSARIES OF LIFE"-COMPARISON OF WILLIAM HUSKISSON AND RICHARD COBDEN'S CONDUCT RESPECTING RELATION BETWEEN "" CHEAPNESS AND DEMAND FOR LABOUR WHAT PROTECTION REALLY DID-THE ARGUMENTS OF FREE-TRADERS DERIVED FROM 66 DEPRESSION UNDER PROTECTION," AND PROSPERITY UNDER FREE TRADE "-THEY DO NOT PROPERLY CONSIDER PROSPERITY UNDER PROTECTION," AND DECLINE UNDER FREE TRADE."

§ 30. So far as our internal trade is concerned, free trade has only exchanged one monopoly for another.

-By making food cheaper at the expense of the productive powers of the country, the free-traders disturbed that relationship between production and consumption which had existed under the old system of protection. The protective system determined that the sources of production should be nourished. But the free-traders said, "No; let production take care of itself; all our endeavours shall be concentrated on the single object of making commodities as cheap as possible to the consumer."

There can be no doubt the free-traders anticipated that by cheapening bread the manufacturing interest would be aggrandised, and with it the major part of the labouring interest of the community. This was the free-trade intention. But whether it was to be effective or not, depended upon the precarious attitude of foreign manufacturing markets to our own. Our present object is to prove that events have not fallen out in accordance with free-trade expectations. We no longer possess a manufacturing supremacy abroad, and even our own markets are invaded by the foreigner. The possibility of this latter event, however disastrous from the protectionist's point of view, was smiled at, and even encouraged by the free-trader, who staked the prosperity of the whole nation on the single chance

1 This is the logical conclusion of the doctrine promulgated by Cobden that foreign markets regulate the prices of the home markets. Give the foreigner, said he, the opportunity of supplying our markets, and then you introduce a tendency to prevent prices from reaching an exorbitant height. In other words, you "protect" the consumer. But suppose the volume of foreign produce should increase to formidable proportions, then what is to save the productive sources of our country? Now it was the Corn Law, in the instance of agriculture, that was framed with this object in view.