CHAPTER XI 



RECIPROCITY THE ESSENCE OF FREE TRADE 



It 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 ob- 

 server 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 one 

 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 in- 

 dependence, 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 Avith 

 themselves, allowing them not only to vote at ^Darlia- 

 mentary 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 over- 

 whelmingly 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 



