THE FISCAL QUESTION 135 



devotees of a religious sect or social cause, employing the 

 powers granted them by the State in order to gain one- 

 sided ends, without respect to others, we see them engaged 

 upon an enterprise which, if it succeeded, would bring the 

 State in ruins about their heads. 



It is true, no doubt, that the legislature must always 

 seek particular forms of the common good, removing now 

 this and now that inequality, and advancing step by step 

 in establishing rights. Nevertheless, in so far as states- 

 manship is wise it aims at the good of the whole in seeking 

 that of the part, and maintains the social equilibrium. 

 And similarly the desires of the good citizen are always 

 checked and chastened by wider and more generous con- 

 ceptions than those of his class and sect. To him there 

 are few mottoes which rank in moral turpitude with that 

 with which one of the most powerful organisations within 

 the State has disgraced the standard under which it fights 

 all too successfully and which reads, " Our Trade, our 

 Politics." 



And it is here that the policy of protection, in all its 

 forms, stands utterly condemned. For, in spite of all the 

 reckless assertions and negations of these days, one finds 

 no one who has had the hardihood to assert that this policy 

 would further public rectitude. On the contrary, it is too 

 plain that, by something like natural necessity, it would 

 lead thousands more to inscribe upon their banner the 

 badge of social wrong-doing, " Our Trade, our Politics." 

 Artificial tariffs, amongst a people endowed with the 

 genius for combination, like our own, and keen in its 

 pursuit of wealth by organised methods, would convert 

 the lobbies of the Houses of Parliament into an arena 

 where trusts and combines contend for their conflicting 



