RECIPROCITY THE ESSENCE OF FREE TRADE 171 



Some Limitations of Free Trade. 



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 aesthetic 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 develop those resources which nature has so bounti- 

 fully given them. Visions of wealth and power float 

 before th-em ; 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 are destroyed hy 

 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 



