246 LIGHT SCIENCE FOR LEISURE HOURS. 



and rising nation, by a Protective system. It will be 

 remembered that this mode of reasoning was employed 

 with considerable force, or rather vehemence, by Carey, 

 of whom it has been truly said by Thorold Rogers, that 

 4 he was the only economist of any reputation who 

 maintained every fallacy in favour of Protection.' The 

 argument is sometimes strengthened by combining the 

 consideration of national greatness with that of social 

 well-being. It is assumed that no nation can be truly 

 great which has not a great variety of occupations. 

 The assumption has arisen partly, perhaps, out of the 

 observed fact that social well-being is certainly not 

 favoured, but the reverse, by a tariff intended to 

 encourage a diversity of employment. Compelled to 

 admit the utter, though they think only the temporary, 

 failure of Protection in this respect, Protectionists 

 adopt the belief that in some way not clearly shown 

 the greatness of a nation depends on the number 

 and variety of employments in which its people are 

 engaged. Both assumptions may be regarded as equally 

 unwarranted, though neither one nor the other can be 

 disproved by positive evidence, for this simple reason 

 (of itself a fatal objection to the reasoning we are 

 considering), that as a matter of fact variety of occupa- 

 tion naturally and invariably accompanies the growth 

 of a nation. The fear of the Western farmers and the 

 Southern planters of America that their country, unless 

 saved from such a fate by Protection, would develope 

 into a nation of farmers and cotton-growers, was an 

 utterly vain one we might almost speak of it as a 



