Protection 



would come our pyramid with a crash. His argu- 

 ments were cogent, and I have never heard them 

 efficiently answered, but the welfare of the manu- 

 facturing classes is only incidental to our discussion. 

 In some senses our interests are antagonistic. They 

 have had the best of it for more than half a cen- 

 tury. Free Trade and cheap imported food played 

 sad havoc with farmers and landowners for their 

 benefit, and it is time that we had a turn. 



It is evident that to place a tax on foodstuffs that 

 should recompense us for the rise in our expendi- 

 ture to be incurred under a general tariff — to put 

 ios. or 15s. per quarter on wheat as the German 

 agrarians have done — would entail a life and death 

 struggle with the cotton spinners, shipbuilders, 

 and our vast financial interests. Either we or they 

 must go to the wall in such a struggle. 



Apart from our coal and iron (fast being super- 

 seded by newly discovered deposits) we have not 

 a tithe of the natural advantages of some rising 

 nations, and we have a greater share of the world's 

 trade and wealth than our natural resources or 

 business ability warrants. We have raised a colossal 

 structure upon the foundation of Free Trade; 

 London with its myriad offices, warehouses, and 

 incessant streams of shipping is the financial cen- 

 tre of the world, and further it is the banking and 

 transhipping centre, because there are no tariff 



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