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RECIPROCITY AND FREE TRADE.

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THE great and well-won reputation of Mr. Wallace as a scientific observer entitles him to respectful attention whenever he propounds any doctrine or theory, however startling; and I therefore need no apology for examining as carefully as I am able his recent utterance in the April number of this review, entitled 'Reciprocity the True Free Trade.' The first impression which this wonderful title made upon me was much the same as if he had said, Cowardice the only true valour,' or 'Swindling the only true honesty.' But when I had a little recovered from my surprise, I considered that the truth or falsehood of this astounding title resolved itself, after all, into a question of words. I first simplified the matter by leaving out the word 'true,' since it appears to be quite evident that a false free trade is no free trade at all. But then I encountered a difficulty with which I never thought to have been embarrassed by a gentleman of such high scientific attainments. The controversy which he raises is concerning free trade, and I do not think we should be thought unduly exacting if we were to require that when he uses the same word he should use it in the same sense, or, indeed, if we had asked that he should give us a definition of free trade, and after he had given us his definition, that he should adhere to it. My complaint is that the word free trade' is used in an essay of no very formidable length in a number of senses utterly at variance with each other. Nay, I am almost sanguine enough to believe that if Mr. Wallace had given himself the trouble of considering for five minutes what meaning he attaches to the word 'free trade,' the essay now lying before us never could have been written. I do not expect my readers to take so serious an accusation on trust, but will adduce the reasons and instances which have driven me to this conviction.

'No one,' says Mr. Wallace, 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 cannon if we can prevent it.' In this passage Mr. Wallace clearly identifies protection with the necessary precautions of police or the precautions required by actual or impending war, and free

trade with the foolhardy carelessness which disregards such precautions. Having just been told that free trade may consist in rashness and negligence, we are next informed that the essence of free trade is mutuality. We are then informed that it is a maxim of expediency. We learn next that if each country does not freely produce that which it can produce best and cheapest, one entire section of the benefits derivable from free trade is destroyed. Next we are told that the whole programme of free trade must be carried out if its advantages are not to be overbalanced by disadvantages. We are next told of the stability which general free trade would give us, from which we are led to infer that there are two kinds of free trade, general and special; but upon this interesting subject we are favoured with no further information. We next hear that our boasted freedom

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of trade shuts us out of half the markets of Europe, but whether because it boasts or because it is free I do not know. We learn next that countervailing duties are strictly in accordance with the essential spirit of free trade, from which it would seem to follow that free trade is something different from its essential spirit; and, lastly, that Mr. Wallace is himself a free-trader. I ask the candid reader whether, from the extracts which I have placed before him, he can form the slightest idea of what Mr. Wallace means by free trade,' and I would respectfully invite him to try his hand at reconciling all that is said about free trade within the limits of a single definition. I cannot sufficiently regret that it never occurred to Mr. Wallace to favour us with a definition of his own. I am convinced that, had he done so, very few of the quotations which I have just cited would have seen the light, and I greatly incline to the opinion that the article I am considering would never have been written. At any rate we should have been spared the trouble and perplexity of answering arguments to which it is impossible to do full justice, because, when we try to ascertain the meaning of the term on which the whole controversy depends, we are met by irreconcilable contradictions. Mr. Wallace would not think of employing the same word to describe a bee and a bat, an elephant and a mouse. Why cannot he treat himself and his readers to a different word to express a different idea? One coin may pay many debts, but one word should, I respectfully submit, be devoted to the service of one single idea.

Little reassured or edified by this examination, I proceed to inquire whether there is any known and received meaning of free trade which can fairly identify it with any system of reciprocity. Now, the word 'free trade' was for many years the watchword of a most acrimonious controversy. That controversy was not raised by, and did not raise, the question of reciprocity. The question was not how foreign countries were to behave to us, but how we were to behave to foreign countries. The free trade for which Cobden and Bright fought and conquered was a negative the abstinence on our part from the im

position of any tax with a view to raise the price of any commodities, and especially of food imported from abroad. Whether reciprocity be right or wrong, it was not in any way included in the controversy of that day. To identify it with retaliation is a mere abuse of language. The contest was not to compel the Government to use their interest with foreign nations, to induce them to take off duties on our produce; the struggle was of a much more direct and practical nature. The English Government were asked to do that which was entirely in their own power-to take off duties of their own imposing which interfered in so striking a way with the comfort and well-being of the people. Free trade is the reverse of protection: protection is putting duties on foreign importation for the purpose of fostering our own products; free trade is taking them off. The meaning of the word 'free trade' is not a matter of argument, but of history. Mr. Wallace says that the essence of free trade is mutuality. I have, I think, shown that historically this is incorrect. I will venture to add that the feeling which carried free trade was not a desire for mutuality, but for justice. The feeling of all sound free-traders was then, and is now, that the main thing to secure is that we shall never again be subject to the gross injustice implied in the exercise of the taxing power not for the benefit of the whole community, for whom it is the business of Parliament to think and act, but against the people at large for the benefit of some particular class or interest. The victory of free trade decided not that we ought to limit or increase our taxes with reference to the taxes which are imposed on us by foreign governments; it was directed to an end which we had the power of attaining without the aid of foreign countries, and laid down a rule for the conduct of Parliament which we are proud to say has never since been infringed. Mr. Wallace, in the same page in which he says that the essence of free trade is mutuality, says that once having got it-that is, free trade without mutuality-we set it up on high as if it were a moral truth instead of a maxim of expediency. I agree that we did so, and I contend that we were right in doing so. That foreign countries should not overburden our manufactures with heavy duties is most desirable, is a matter of expediency, and cannot be fairly put higher, for foreign countries owe us no duty and are not bound to consider our interest. But that our Parliament should abuse the power entrusted to it of imposing taxes for the good of the whole nation, in order to enrich the few at the expense of the many, is a crying wrong and injustice, to which, when once pointed out, nothing short of absolute force would induce a free people to submit.

In the character of a professed votary of free trade Mr. Wallace is continually placing us in the most embarrassing positions. He has, as I have shown, carefully withheld from us the knowledge of what free trade really is, and, as if this were not enough, he applies him

self to disparage the idol which he conceals from us. He says that, admitting that free trade will benefit a country materially, it does not follow that it will be best for that country to adopt it. He puts the case of a country spoiled, as a tourist would say, by mines and furnaces, and of another country which has preserved its natural beauty at the cost of neglecting its mineral wealth, and asks triumphantly, Is the former necessarily right and the latter wrong?' Here he seems to assume that free trade consists in exercising, and protection in rejecting, certain unpicturesque industries. I answer that free trade has nothing to do with the choice of employments, but is solely concerned with the manner in which the Government where the industry is carried on behaves to those who exercise those industries and to the public at large—that is, whether the Government imposes taxes on the rest of the community to support those industries or no. The question whether these unpicturesque industries should be prosecuted or not has nothing to do with political economy, any more than the question whether a man likes to spend his money in growing tulips or in feeding pigs. I agree to the not very profound remark that it is fortunate that most countries are as varied as they are,' but I fear rather on æsthetic than economical grounds. We do not think the worse of a country, as Mr. Wallace seems to do, because it has one predominating industry

India mittit ebur, molles sua thura Sabæi—

under the influence of free trade. Nor am I afflicted with the idea which seems to pursue him that people would become parts of a great machine for the growth of one product or the manufacture of one article. At any rate we are sure that free trade or (what is the same thing) the abolition of protection cannot bring about this distressing consummation.

Mr. Wallace tells us that the programme of free trade is that each country shall freely produce that which it can naturally produce best, and that all shall freely exchange their surplus products. As this millennium has never been realised except in a slight degree with France, it seems to follow that our free-trade policy, or that which most people except Mr. Wallace believe to be our free-trade policy, has been a disastrous failure. We have been in the habit of believing that we that is, the country at large-gained a great deal by being relieved from a number of unjust and vexatious taxes imposed not for the benefit of the public at large, but upon the public for the benefit of a few favoured interests or industries. We have been relieved from a certain amount of taxation and from an artificial dearth which that taxation was intended to produce, and did produce in fact. Of course we should be better pleased if other countries had followed our example. But it would be a libel on the intelligence of the nation to say that we made the change from protection to free

trade in the expectation and on the condition that other countries. would sooner or later follow our example. There is no country in Europe where enlightened public opinion has so much influence over the government as in England. When we were fresh from the arduous struggle which ended in the attainment of free trade, or, what is exactly the same thing, the abolition of protection, we should have been dreamers indeed if we had abandoned ourselves to the delusion that the other States of the world would immediately or within an assignable period follow our lead. We secured what was within our reach, glad to have obtained so much and willing to profit by a similar return of common sense on the part of our neighbours. To have based our case on reciprocity would have been to court certain defeat, for nothing would have been easier than to show that there was no reasonable chance that we should be met in a similar spirit. It would have evinced an unpardonable want of sagacity in the free-trade leaders, of which the protectionist would not have been slow to take advantage.

The idol which Mr. Wallace worships is stability.

As you were' is his motto. No one can doubt, he says, that stability in the various industries of a country is the very essence of true prosperity, leading to a steady rate of wages and an assured return both to labour and capital. And this, he proceeds to assert, there is no doubt, can only be obtained by some species of reciprocity. With all deference I must beg leave to be included among the doubters. I do not so read the ways of Providence. Strange as it may sound, I believe not in stability, but in progress. I think that a country whose whole ambition is centred on keeping things as they are is certain, under the present condition of things, in this age very decidedly to recede. Suppose that you have succeeded in neutralising or paralysing your rivals without your borders, you have still two formidable rivals with whom you will have to reckon the inventive spirit of your own citizen and Nature herself. Look at what is happening in England at this moment. The stability of the iron manufacture, the pride of England, has departed. No one can say that an enemy has done this. It is, as I understand, the result of the absence of phosphorus in hæmatite coal, which peculiarly qualifies it for the production of steel, and steel, for many purposes, is about to supersede iron. The disturbance of industry and the loss to some persons will be great, but no one can doubt that mankind at large will be the gainers. This is the law of progress, the supersession of one invention and one process by another, the destroying one industry in order to replace it by something better, and not stagnation thinly disguised under the name of stability. Non progredi est regredi; and, if this keeping things as they are were all it could do for us, the battle of free trade would, I freely admit, not be worth fighting. The battle of free trade was fought and won to create not a stagnant pool, but a bright and

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