314 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



labour in the country hy cxdudinrj foreign competition " is a 

 fallacy. The generally accepted opinion which has been thrust 

 upon this country, by irresistible proofs of too material a 

 nature to admit of scepticism is, that if you want to protect 

 your own industries and find employment for your own people 

 — you must exclude foreign competition, and this opinion, formed 

 out of convincing evidence which is forthcoming from every 

 direction, would appear to be absolutely irrefutable. 



But do not let us accept either view of the case without 

 first of all reducing the question from an abstract principle to 

 concrete examples. 



Supposing, in the first place, we manufacture 100,000 tons 

 of steel rails per annum which requires the services of 10,000 

 men. If we employ British labour, 10,000 Britishers are 

 simply — employed. Let in foreign labour in competition with 

 our own countrymen, and every foreigner employed means the 

 displacement of a British workman. 



If by " excluding foreign competition " the writer of " The 

 Free-trade Movement" means that we should not attempt to 

 exclude the competition of foreign countries for our orders of 

 100,000 tons of rails, then the case simply resolves itself into 

 this — that every ton of rails made by a foreign country, in part 

 of that 100,000 tons, means less work for British manufacturers 

 to that extent. 



If the M'riter means neither of these things, then he had 

 better explain his meaning. 



These, then, are the conclusions which must inevitably arise 

 out of tlie condition postulated by " The Free-trade ]\lovement," 

 and although it is, perhaps, not quite the interpretation the 

 writer intended it should bear, it is, nevertheless, the only one 

 that rationally minded men are likely to give to it in these 

 times when real, far-reaching reform is necessary to save the 

 country from a worse fate. In other words, this remarkable 

 passage which deals in abstract principles rather than in 

 concrete cases, is but another example of the danger of 

 " generalising " and of the exceedingly mutable basis of all 

 questions of economic "science." 



