WHAT ONLOOKERS THINK OF FREE-TRADE 65 



spread wealth and prosperity amont^ foreign nations at the 

 expense of our own countrymen. We do not grudge foreign 

 peoples that measure of success and prosperity which the wiser 

 fiscal laws of their country enable them to enjoy, but we bitterly 

 resent the continuance of inept fiscal laws in our own country, 

 which serve only to limit the success of the British people and 

 deprive them of that prosperity in which it is their right to 

 participate. 



The consideration of this part of the question might be 

 suitably closed by the following extract from the Report : — 



Germany's Prosperity synchronises with Protection 



" Whilst proceeding from town to town in this busy and pros- 

 perous district of the G-erman Empire, we liave been forced to face 

 the fact that it has been during the period following upon the 

 introduction of protection duties by Prince Bismarck, in 1879, that 

 Germany has ceased to be poor and has become well-to-do ; that her 

 work-people have received a large increase in wages ; that the general 

 social condition of the latter has improved ; that Germany's industry 

 has developed ; that she has succeeded in extending her foreign trade 

 and in acquiring ready markets for her continuously developing 

 i?idustry. 



" We showed in our report about Essen, that in that district 

 wages had increased by 61 per cent, since 1<S71, and by 267 per 

 cent, as compared with what they were seventy years ago." 



It is, of course, impossible to do justice in this brief chapter 

 to so vast a question as is involved in the consideration of 

 international fiscal laws, but this one example will at least 

 serve to show that widespread pauperism, with vast masses on 

 the verge of poverty, general unemployment and the necessity 

 for constant emigration, do not obtain in Germany. 



On the contrary, it conclusively proves that poverty — as we 

 know it — is unknown there, that labourers are scarce, work 

 plentiful, and wages good, while there is general prosperity 

 among the working-classes and no need for emigration. 



Whatever else this may indicate, one fact stands out with 

 remarkable clearness, and that is — if our political parties had 

 not sacrificed the commonweal to their own narrow, sordid 

 interests, the people of England would to-day be in the same 

 enviable condition as their German confreres. 



