WHAT ANTI-FREE-TRADERS TUINK OF FREE-TRADE 25 



is being asked by an increasing number of people year by year, 

 and it is being asked with increasing persistence ; and when it 

 becomes more generally known that in no country in the world 

 — save our own — does the necessity exist for raising enormous 

 sums annually to support a vast pauper population, those who 

 are responsible for this phenomenal poverty must answer the 

 question. 



Pauperism — Unemployment a Eesult of Free-trade 



Appalling pauperism, a mean, sordid condition for literally 

 millions of our people, a condition that is totally unnecessary 

 and therefore absolutely unjustifiable from any point of view — 

 ethically, socially, or economically — are, it is contended, some 

 of the results of Free-trade. 



Growing Unemployment, tliat has assumed such proportions 

 as to become one of the burning questions of the day, the bug- 

 bear of each successive Government, a standing menace to the 

 nation, and a source of general feeling of discontent and political 

 unrest, is also an ugly growth that has sprung out of, and clings 

 to, the Free-trade system with the same pertinacity that the 

 foul sea-growths cling to the sides of a great ocean liner. 

 Pauperism certainly existed prior to the abolition of the Corn 

 Laws, but as it is claimed by its supporters that Free-trade 

 was invented to, among other things, banish poverty, relieve 

 distress, and give work to the unemployed, the fact that poverty 

 and unemployment exist to-day as a curse to the people and a 

 menace to the commonweal, after sixty-two years of trial, proves, 

 it is said, how illusory was Cobden's promise and how unsuited 

 was his system to the requirements of tlie British people. 



Justification for Grave Charges 



That there is justification for these grave charges seems but 

 too true. One of the first things that strikes a foreign visitor 

 to our country is the prevailing Poverty, which is easily 

 discernible in every one of our great towns and throughout 

 the length and breadth of the land ; and if this evil is so easily 

 seen by a chance visitor, how much more apparent is it to 

 every British subject who does not voluntarily shut his eyes 

 to what is undoubtedly an outward and visible sign of mal- 

 administration — somewhere ? And, this being so, it is reason- 

 ably held that soinethiny or somebody must necessarily be 

 responsible. 



Without wishing to prejudice the Free-trade case, it must 

 be admitted by every fair-minded man that the poverty of the 



