136 THE MORAL ASPECT OF 



interests. Such a course of action is degrading to those 

 engaged upon it, and its indirect moral and political results 

 are deplorable. The guardians of the State, in whose 

 probity lies the immediate security for our social well- 

 being, would be distracted from their high duty by the 

 ' ' lobbying " industrial potentates. And who will dare to 

 assert that they might not be torn away from it ; or that 

 from the high places of the nation's social will the waves 

 of corruption would not roll back upon the nation itself ? 



Our social needs are many in these times, and some of 

 them are grave and urgent ; but, amongst these, I cannot 

 reckon the need of creating larger opportunities and 

 greater temptations to political and industrial corruption. 

 And whether we should succumb to these temptations or 

 not, it is certainly no wise statesmanship that calls them 

 forth. We may be losing our commercial and industrial 

 pre-eminence, it is not proved ; we may be on the way 

 to national poverty, I do not believe it ; but we are 

 certainly not, as yet, at that point in the game where we 

 must throw our national character amongst the stakes. 



It is not relevant to say that our neighbours have done 

 this. The question is, have they done it without loss? 

 And there is only one answer to the question, and that 

 answer is so well known and certain as to make detailed 

 proof supererogatory. To the mass of evidence we already 

 possess I shall add only that of one witness the testimony 

 of an American citizen, a leading lawyer and financier, who 

 has been president of a large railway company, and con- 

 cerned in other large business operations. " If Chamber- 

 lain's opponents," he says, "would only study the American 

 results of protection, and the inevitable consequences of 

 creating an artificial profit by misuse of taxation, bringing 



