54 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



axe conducted on the principle of securing some advantages for 

 certain sections of the people at the expense of certain other 

 sections, class legislation must he resorted to and the interests 

 of the commonwealth endangered. 



This reckless method of dealing with grave political matters 

 has, it is contended, resulted in the worst possible effects on the 

 national life, which are only too manifest in every town and 

 village in the country ; and whatever else may be claimed for 

 Free-trade, this single fact in itself constitutes so serious a 

 charge as to condemn it on the grounds of its lacking in those 

 essentials which every national system of economics must 

 possess before it can secure the best possible results to all 

 classes of the community. 



Onlookers deny Advantages claimed by Free-traders 



Looked at from the point of view of public utility, this vast 

 band of independent spectators see no more reason to invest 

 the Free-trade system with those wonderful enlightening and 

 civilising influences claimed for it by Free-traders than do the 

 more direct antagonists of the movement — the Tariff-reformers. 

 That enormous trade expansion, the development of manu- 

 facturing resources, the building of railways, telegraphs, and 

 the opening up of all means of internal and foreign communica- 

 tion, have taken place during the last fifty years or so, there is 

 no question. The cheapening of certain commodities, the spread 

 of education, the freedom of the Press, the enormous increase in 

 cheap literature, the extension of the cheap postal system, and 

 a host of other benefits too numerous to mention, are also freely 

 admitted ; but to affirm that these are the results of Free-trade 

 is to advance a proposition which is demonstrable only by the 

 measure of its own absurdity. That food and certain other 

 commodities are cheaper than they were is due almost entirely 

 to the general application of steam to seagoing craft, the 

 enormous extension of the railway system in every country 

 of the world, the tremendous facilities offered throughout the 

 world for the rapid and cheap handling and transport of 

 goods, and the universal application of mechanical contrivances 

 to manufactures. Wheat, for instance, can now be carried 

 from the United States to Liverpool three or four times as 

 cheaply as it could be conveyed seventy years ago from London 

 to Liverpool. 



