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JEFFERSON and HAMILTON, ALEXANDER. ' One incidental effect of the failure to secure free trade was that the African slave trade, with West Indies as a depot for supplying the American market, ceased to be remunerative, and the opposition to the abolition of the trade was very much weaker than it would otherwise have been; see Hochstetter, " Die wirtschaftlichen and politischen Motive fur die Abschaffung des britischen Sklavenhandels," in Schmoller, Staats and Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschungen, xxv. i. 37. J. Welsford, " Cobden's Foreign Teacher," in National Review (December 1905).obliged to import a considerable amount of corn. The exceptional weakness, as well as the exceptional strength, of Great Britain, among European countries, made it seem desirable to adopt the principle of unrestricted commercial intercourse, not merely in the tentative fashion in which it had been put in operation by Huskisson, but in the thoroughgoing fashion in which it at last commended itself to the minds of Peel and Gladstone. The " Manchester men " saw clearly where their interest
economy
interest
List
Free trade was attractive as an ideal, because it appeared to offer the greatest production of goods to the world as a whole, and the largest share of material goods to each consumer; it is cosmopolitan, and it treats consumption, and the interest of the consumer, as such, as the end to be considered. Hence it lies open to objections which are partly political and partly economic. As cosmopolitan, free-trade doctrine is apt to be indifferent to national tradition and aspiration. In so far indeed as patriotism is a mere aesthetic sentiment, it may be tolerated, but in so far as it implies a genuine wish and intention to preserve and defend the national habits and character to the exclusion of alien elements, the cosmopolitan mind will condemn it as narrow and mischievous. In the first half of the 19th century there were many men who believed that national ambitions and jealousies of every kind were essentially dynastic, and that if monarchies were abolished there would be fewer occasions of war, so that the expenses of the business of government would be enormously curtailed. For Cobden and his contemporaries it was natural to regard the national administrative institutions as maintained for the benefit of the " classes " and without much advantage to the " masses." But in point of fact, modern times have shown the existence in democracies of a patriotic sentiment which is both exclusive and aggressive; and the burden of armaments has steadily increased. It was by means of a civil war that the United States attained to a consciousness of national life; while such later symptoms as the recent
In Germany the growth of militarism and nationalism have gone on side by side under constitutional government, and certainly in harmony with predominant public opinion . Neither of these communities is willing to sink its individual conception of progress in those of the world at large; each is jealous of the intrusion of alien elements which cannot be reconciled with its own political and social system. And a similar recrudescence of patriotic feeling has been observable in other countries, such as Norway and Hungary: the growth of national sentiment is shown, not only in the attempts to revive and popularize the use of a national language, but still more decidedly in the determination to have a real control over the economic life of the country. It is here that the new patriotism comes into direct conflict with the political principles of free trade as advocated by Bastiat and Cobden; for them the important point was that countries, by becoming dependent on one another, would be prevented from engaging in hostilities. The new nations are' Compatriot Club Lectures (1905), p. 3o6. determined that they will not allow other countries to have such control over their economic condition, as to be able to exercise a powerful influence on their political life. Each is determined to be the master in his own house
Economically, free trade lays stress on consumption as the chief
special
economy
This deliberate rejection of the doctrine of free trade between nations, both in its political and economic aspects, has not interfered, however, with the steady progress of free commercial intercourse within the boundaries of a single though composite political community. " Internal free trade," though the name was not then current in this sense,was one of the burning questions in England in the 17th century; it was perhaps as important a factor as puritanism in the fall of Charles I. Internal free trade was secured in France in the 18th century; thanks to Hamilton,' it was embodied in the constitution of the United States; it was introduced into Germany by Bismarck; and was firmly established in the Dominion of Canada and the Commonwealth of Australia. It became in consequence, where practicable, a part of the modern federal idea as usually interpreted. There are thus great areas, externally self-protecting, where free trade, as between internal divisions, has been introduced with little, if any, political difficulty, and with considerable economic advantage. These cases are sometimes quoted as justifying the expectation that the same principle is likely to be adopted sooner or later in regard to external trading relations. There J. IS. Mill, Principles of Political Economy, book v. chapter x. 1. 2 F. S. Oliver, Alexander Hamilton, 142. is some reason, however, for raising the question whether free trade has been equally successful, not only in its economic, but in its social results, in all the large political communities where it has been introduced. In a region like the United States of America, it is probably seen at its best; there is an immense variety of different products throughout that great zone of the continent, so that the mutual co-operation of the various parts is most beneficial, while the standard of habit and comfort is so far uniform3 throughout the whole region, and the facilities for the change of employment are so many, that there is little injurious competition between different districts. In the British empire the conditions are reversed; but though the great self-governing colonies have withdrawn from the circle, in the hope of building up their own economic life in their own way, free trade is still maintained over a very large part of the British empire. Throughout this area, there are very varied physical conditions; there is also an extraordinary variety of races, each with its own habits, and own standard of comfort; and in these circumstances it may be doubted whether the free competition, involved in free trade, is really altogether wholesome. Within this sphere the ideal of Bastiat and his followers is being realized. England, as a great manufacturing country, has more than held her own; India and Ireland are supplied with manufactured goods by England, and in each case the population is forced to look to the soil for its means of support, and for purchasing power. In each case the preference for tillage, as an occupation, has rendered it comparatively easy to keep the people on the land; but there is some reason to believe that the law of diminishing returns is already making itself felt, at all events in India, and is forcing the people into deeper poverty.' It may be doubtful in the case of Ireland how far the superiority of England in industrial pursuits has prevented the development of manufactures; the progress in the last decades of the 18th century was too short-lived to be conclusive; but there is at least a strong impression in many quarters that the industries of Ireland might have flourished if they had had better opportunities allowed them.' In the case of India we know that the hereditary artistic skill, which had been built up in bygone generations, has been stamped out. It seems possible that the modern unrest in India, and the discontent in Ireland, may be connected with the economic conditions in these countries, on which free trade has been imposed without their consent. So far the population which subsists on the cheaper food, and has the lower standard of life, has been the sufferer; but the mischief might operate in another fashion. The self-governing colonies at all events feel that competition in the same market between races with different standards of comfort has infinite possibilities of mischief. It is easy to conjure up conditions under which the standard of comfort of wage-earners in England would be seriously threatened. Since the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica was published it has become clear that the free-trade doctrines of Bastiat and Cobden have not been gaining ground in the world at large, and at the opening of the loth century it could hardly be said with confidence that the question was " finally settled " so far as England was concerned. As to whether the interests of Great Britain still demanded that she should continue on the line she adopted in the exceptional conditions of the middle of the 19th century, expert opinion was conspicuously divided ;6 but there remained no longer the old enthusiasm for free trade as3 The standard is, of course, lower among the negroes and mean whites in the South than in the North and West. ' F. Beauclerk, " Free Trade in India," in Economic Review (July 1907), xvii. 284. A. E. Murray, History of the Commercial and Financial Relations between England and Ireland, 294. 6 For the tariff reform movement
the harbinger of an Utopia. The old principles of the bourgeois manufacturers had been taken up by the proletariat and shaped to suit themselves. Socialism
Socialism
1'3IBLIOGRAPHY.-Reference has already been made to the principal works which deal critically with the free-trade policy. Professor Fawcett's Free Trade is a good exposition of free-trade principles; so also is Professor Bastable's Commerce of Nations. Among authors who have restated the principles with special
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