16 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



their progressive prosperity, while the introduction of the penny- 

 post, the passing of the Education Act in 1870 and free educa- 

 tion, the amazing growth of the Press, the mass of cheap litera- 

 ture, the steady diminution of crime, the holiday clubs of the 

 work-people, the growth of hospitals and dispensaries, the 

 amount expended by the working classes upon pleasures and 

 athletics — football, cricket, cycling, and the rest of it — are all 

 taken as evidence of the many remarkable and widespread 

 benefits that the people of Great Britain have derived from the 

 adoption of Free-trade principles. Indeed, it may be said that 

 whatever progression has been made by the people of this 

 country during the last sixty-two years in education, literature, 

 in trade and manufactures, in the accumulation of wealth, in 

 work as in play, or, in other words, in the broad fields of reli- 

 gion, ethics, and economics, which are, again, all included in that 

 com]3rehensive term, " Sociology," is due to the civilising and 

 beneficent effects of Free-trade. 



From the foregoing considerations it becomes abundantly 

 clear why Great Britain withdrew from the rest of the civilised 

 countries and set up for herself a system of economics which 

 forms the subject of so much discussion at the present day, and 

 which must necessarily become the most momentous question 

 of this age to the British people, because in it lies wrapped up 

 their weal or their woe. Free-traders sing pagans of praise to 

 a system which they created, and of which, for various well- 

 known reasons, they are excessively enamoured ; but there may, 

 however, be detected two uncertain notes in this jubilant song, 

 which mar its harmony and create a feeling of uneasiness. 



Said one great Free-trade advocate — 



" The only extensive industry which was not advanced during the 

 Victorian era is agriculture." * 



And, later on — 



" That the problem of poverty yet remains, and that there is a 

 residue of helpless, shiftless poor in our large towns, and that many 

 classes are yet ignorant, and struggling for a wretched subsistence, 

 hidden away in back streets and alleys, these, and facts like these, 

 only prove that there are weighty social questions still unsolved, and 

 that moral and economic reforms have to penetrate to a much lower 

 level." t 



These two brief sentences exactly describe the position, and 

 as they happen to coincide with the views of their Tariff-reform- 

 ing adversaries, it will perhaps be as well to devote a separate 

 chapter to the consideration of Taritf-reform contentions. 



* "The Free-Trade Movement," Arinitage Smith, p. 139. f Ibid., p. 144. 



