MESSAGE ON FOREIGN TRADE 343 



eminent free-traders have expressed opinions similar to those quoted 

 above. 



I will close this rambling and, to me, most unsatisfactory address, 

 with a few quotations from a most remarkable book published in 1850. 

 Its title is " The Theory of Human Progression/"' Its author wa§ Pat- 

 rick Edward Dove, a learned Scotchman, who held that land rent should 

 go to the state for the benefit of all. 



Where none has a legal right which is not accorded to another in the scheme 

 of the state, the cause of internal strife is obliterated; and though governments 

 go to war on very insufficient pretexts, populations seldom or never do so with- 

 out a just cause. The obliteration of the cause, therefore, may fairly be ex- 

 pected to obliterate the fact. The feudal system, with all its modifications past 

 and present, however mild or constitutional, is nothing more than systematized 

 slavery. At the bottom of society there must always be found the great masses 

 in a worse condition than nature intended. And wherever the feudal system 

 exists, or any remnant of it, that system, or its remnant, creates a cause of war 

 among the classes of society; which cause of war creates perpetual uneasiness, 

 frequent agitations, and occasional revolutions. . . . 



God has constituted nature aright, and the only protection trade requires is 

 protection from violence, and fraud, and state interference. . . . 



And first and foremost must come the question of the land. Suppose, for 

 instance, it should be clearly proved, according to the science of facts (as some 

 have termed economy), that it would be more beneficial to the whole associated 

 community of Britain, to abolish all customs and excises, and all taxes whatever 

 except a land-tax, which could be collected for nothing or next to nothing, what 

 would political economy say in that case? Would it abolish all the taxes that 

 interfere with trade, and thereby absorb the rents of the lands; or would it 

 determine that a man with a parchment who does not labor, is to be preferred 

 to a man without a parchment who does? From this dilemma political economy 

 can not escape. There must be another system, one that can solve these ques- 

 tions by rule, not arbitrarily, but scientifically — by a rule that is general and 

 applicable to all parties. 



And this new system is necessarily politics, or the science of equity. 



Political economy, in fact, is the natural preparative for a science of equity. 

 . . , And thus, politics, or the science of equity, springs necessarily in chrono- 

 logical order out of political economy; and when economists have directed the 

 state affairs up to those questions which they cannot answer, they must cede the 

 first place to the true politicians, or themselves become true politicians. And 

 when that period arrives the political evolution is complete, and there is the 

 reign of equity or justice. 



A MESSAGE FPtOM THE COUNTRY O^vT FOEEIGN TEADE^ 



By the Honorable CHARLES H. SHERRILL 



LATE AMEEICAN MINISTER TO ARGENTINA 



T ISTEjST to a message from the country : " Give new freedom to our 



-■-^ railroads and our dying merchant marine so that they can aid 



our crusade for foreign trade, and permit American labor employers 



1 Address delivered before the annual meeting of the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, Philadelphia, Dec. 29, 1914. 



