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fictions really considered their order to be of so sacred a character that even to kill a priest was to enter into a supernatural condition; that they neglected in consequence to apply for justice to the officers of the Crown, and contented themselves with excommunication, till they found their folly recoil upon themselves. There is nothing to show that any criminal actually prosecuted in court ever was, or ever could have been, taken out of the hands of the Crown authorities under the plea of the clerical immunities. The Council of Westminster merely put an end to an absurdity which was beginning to grow. Even if the law had been as Mr. Freeman says that it was, the Constitutions of Clarendon were in force at the time of Becket's murder. Priests at that moment were liable to be tried and sentenced as felons, and it is not conceivable that the reverse side of ecclesiastical privilege from which the clergy were sufferers should have been left practically standing. That Henry, who was threatened with excommunication, and was most anxious to make his peace with the Church, should have availed himself of such an excuse for neglecting to bring the murderers to their answer, is wholly incredible. The only rational conclusion is, that he declined to lay blame on others which he felt to attach more properly to himself. Such at least is my own opinion, which I believe myself entitled to hold, without being bespattered with mud by Mr. Freeman.

For the present I shall say no more. If I have not succeeded in showing that Mr. Freeman in bringing his charges against me has been more rash in his own statements, more mistaken in his facts, more unfair in his inferences, than he has shown me to be, nothing that I can add will be of the least avail. Mr. Freeman talks of an 'incurable twist.' To me it seems that there is an 'incurable twist' in Mr. Freeman whenever he has to speak of myself, and that where every object appears to him distorted the cause is in the eye which sees and not in the thing which is seen. If I were to argue from his own language as he has argued from mine, I should suppose him influenced by fanatical hatred' of me.

Here, so far as there is any personal controversy between myself and Mr. Freeman, the matter must end. His friend the Saturday Reviewer has pursued me for twenty years, secure in his coat of darkness, with every species of unfounded insinuation. He has himself appeared at last on the field in his own person, and I have desired him to take back his imputations. For the future he will take his own course; I shall not be a party in any further controversy with him.

No one is more conscious than I am of the faults of my literary work. No one is less anxious to defend them. But, after thirty years of severe and I believe honest labour, I will not suffer a picture to be drawn of me in such colours as Mr. Freeman has been pleased to use without entering my own protest with such emphasis as I can command.

J. A. FROUDE.

RECIPROCITY THE TRUE FREE TRADE.

Ir is usually said that the English are a practical people; that they prefer experience to theory, and will seldom follow out admitted principles to their full logical results. But this hardly represents them fairly, and many facts in their history might lead an outside observer to give them credit for exactly opposite qualities. He might even say that the English race are more guided by principles than any other, because, though it takes them a long time to become satisfied of the truth of any new principle, when they have once adopted it they follow it out almost blindly, regardless of the contempt of their neighbours, or of loss and injury to themselves. As an example, he might point to the English race in America, who, having at length seen that slavery was incompatible with the principles of their own declaration of independence, not only made all the slaves free, but at once raised the whole body of those slaves, degraded and ignorant as they were, to perfect political equality with themselves, allowing them not only to vote at parliamentary elections but to sit as legislators, and to hold any office under Government. In England itself he would point to our action in the matter of education and free trade. Till quite recently, public feeling was overwhelmingly in favour of leaving education to private and local enterprise; it was maintained that to educate children was a personal not a public duty, and that you should not attempt to make people learned and wise by Act of Parliament. At length a change came. Public opinion and the legislature alike agreed that to educate the people was a national duty; and so thoroughly is this idea now being carried out, that food for the mind is looked upon as of more importance than food or clothing for the body, and parents who cannot earn sufficient to keep their children in health are fined, or at all events made to lose time, which is to them often the cost of a meal, because they do not send their children to school, and either themselves pay the school fees or become paupers. An even more remarkable instance of devotion to a principle might be adduced in our action with regard to free trade. Till a generation ago we put heavy import duties on food of all kinds, as well as on many other raw products and manufactured articles. On this question of the

free import of food for the people, the battle of free trade was fought, and, after a severe struggle, was won. The result was that the principle of universal free trade gradually became a fixed idea, as something supremely good and constantly to be sought after for its own sake. Its benefits were, theoretically, so clear and indisputable to us, that we thought we had only to set the example to other nations less wise than ourselves, who would be sure to adopt it before long, and thus bring about a kind of commercial millennium. We did set the example. We threw open our ports, not only to food for our people, but to the manufactured goods of all other nations, though those goods often competed with our own productions, and sometimes produced immediate misery and starvation among our manufacturing classes. But, firm to a great principle, we continued our course, and notwithstanding that after nearly twenty years' trial other nations have not followed our example, we continue to admit their manufactures free, while they shut out ours by protective duties.

These various instances do not support the view that we are especially practical in our politics, but rather that we are essentially conservative. We possess as a nation an enormous vis inertia. A tremendous motive force is required to set us going in any new direction, but when once in motion an equally great force is requisite in order to stop or even to turn us. After spending so much mental effort and so much national agitation in deciding to adopt a new principle, we hate to have to review our decision, to think we have done wrong, or even that any limitations or conditions are to be taken into account in the application of it. This rigid conservatism is well shown in the treatment of the demand of many of our manufacturers and some of our politicians for a fresh investigation of the subject of free trade by the light of the experience of the last eighteen years. They put forward 'reciprocity' as the principle on which we should act, and they are simply treated with derision or contempt. They are spoken of as weak, or foolish, or ignorant people, wanting in self-reliance, and seeking to bolster up home productions by a return to protection; and this is the tone adopted by the press generally, and by all the chief politicians, both Liberal and Conservative. Little argument is attempted; the facts, of increased imports and diminished exports, and of widespread commercial distress, are explained away, as all facts in such a complex question can be, and the names of Adam Smith and Cobden are quoted as having settled the question once and for ever.

Now this mode of treating an important subject which affects the well-being of the nation is not satisfactory. No one believes more completely than myself in the benefits of free trade, or the impolicy of restricting free intercourse between nation and nation any more than between individual and individual; but, like most other principles, it must be subject in its application to the condiVOL. V.-No. 26.

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tions imposed upon us by the state of civilisation and the mutual relations of the independent countries with whom we have dealings. Nobody advocates free trade in poisons, or explosives, or even in alcoholic drinks; and few believe that we are bound to allow Zulus or Chinese to become armed with breech-loaders and rifled cannons if we can prevent it; and the mere fact that restriction in these cases is necessary should make us see that no commercial principle, however good in itself, can be of universal application in an imperfect human society.

The essence of free trade is its mutuality. Its whole value depends upon the almost self-evident proposition, that, if each country freely produces that which it can produce best and cheapest, and exchanges its surplus for the similarly produced products of other countries, all will derive benefit. As an argument against the old policy of bounties and monopolies and prohibitory import duties, and the idea that it was best for a country to produce everything for itself and be independent of all its neighbours, this was irresistible, and it did good work in its day. But people were so impressed with its self-evident common-sense (which it yet took them so many years of hard struggle to force upon a reluctant and conservative population) that having once got it, they set it up on high and worshipped it, as if it were a moral truth, instead of a mere maxim of expediency calculated to produce certain economical effects if properly carried out. They have thus been led to overlook two important aspects of the question, which must be carefully studied and acted upon if we are to obtain the full benefits to be derived from free trade. The one is, that, even if universally adopted-that is, if no artificial restrictions were imposed by any nation on the trade of any other nation with it-there are yet many conceivable cases in which its full application would produce injurious results, morally, physically, and intellectually, which might so overbalance the mere commercial advantages it would bestow, as to justify a people in voluntarily declining to act up to the principles it enunciates. The other is, that even the commercial advantages depend on the whole programme of free trade being carried out, and that if the first half of it is neglected—that is, if each country does not freely produce that which it can naturally produce best and cheapest-then it may be demonstrated that one entire section of the benefits derivable from free trade, and perhaps the most important section for the real well-being of a nation, is destroyed. These two points are of such importance, that they deserve to be carefully considered.

Admitting that free trade will necessarily benefit a country materially, it does not follow that it will be best for that country to adopt it. Man has an intellectual, a moral, and an æsthetic nature; and the exercise and gratification of these various faculties is thought by some people to be of as much importance as cheap cotton, cheap

silk, or cheap claret. We will suppose a small country to be but moderately fertile, yet very beautiful, with abundance of green fields, pleasant woodlands, picturesque hills, and sparkling streams. The inhabitants live by agriculture and by a few small manufactures, and obtain some foreign necessaries and luxuries by means of their surplus products. They have also abundance of coal and of every kind of metallic ore, which pervade their whole country but which they have hitherto worked only on a small scale for the supply of their own wants. They are a happy and a healthy people; their towns and cities are comparatively small; their whole population enjoy pure air and beautiful scenery, and a large proportion of them are engaged in healthy outdoor occupations. But now the doctrines of free trade are spread among them. They are told that they are wasting their opportunities: that other nations can supply them with various articles of food and clothing far cheaper than they can supply themselves; while they, on the other hand, can supply half the world with coal and iron, lead and copper, if they will but do their duty as members of the great comity of nations, and develope those resources which nature has so bountifully given them. Visions of wealth and power float before them; they listen to the voice of the charmer; they devote themselves to the development of their natural resources; their hills and valleys become full of furnaces and steam-engines; their green meadows are buried beneath heaps of mine-refuse or destroyed by the fumes from copper-works; their waving woods are cut down for timber to supply their mines and collieries; their towns and cities increase in size, in dirt, and in gloom; the fish are killed in their rivers by mineral solutions, and entire hill-sides are devastated by noxious vapours; their population is increased from ten millions to twenty millions, but most of them live in black countries' or in huge smoky towns and, in default of more innocent pleasures, take to drink the country as a whole is more wealthy, but, owing to the large proportion of the population depending upon the fluctuating demands of foreign trade, there are periodically recurring epochs of distress far beyond what was ever known in their former condition.

With this example of the natural effects of carrying out the essential principles of free trade, another people in almost exactly similar circumstances determine that they prefer less wealth and less population, rather than destroy the natural beauty of their country and give up the simple, healthful, and natural pleasures they now enjoy. They accordingly, by the free choice of the people in Parliament assembled, forbid by high duties the exportation of any minerals, and even regulate the number of mines that shall be worked, in order that their country shall not be changed into a huge congeries of manufactories. A balance is thus kept up between different industries, all of which are allowed absolutely free development so long as they do not interfere with the public enjoyment, or cause any permanent

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