CH. viii COAL A NATIONAL TRUST 139 



pies of unrestricted free trade, and anxious to increase 

 their wealth, one after another of the landowners sold 

 their springs to manufacturers, who used up all the water 

 except that required to supply the wants of their own 

 workpeople, thus rendering the remainder of the country 

 almost uninhabitable. A still more extreme case, but one 

 rather more to the point, would be that of a country 

 possessing a surface soil of very moderate depth, but of 

 extreme fertility, and supporting a dense population on its 

 vegetable products. The landowners might find it very 

 profitable to them to sell this surface soil to the wealthy 

 horticulturists of other countries ; and if the principle 

 of free trade is unlimited, they would be justified in 

 doing so, although they would permanently impoverish 

 the land, and render it capable of supporting a less 

 numerous and less healthy population in long future 

 ages. 



Most persons will admit that in both these cases the 

 exercise of the unrestricted right of free trade becomes a 

 wrong to mankind, and should on no account be permitted ; 

 and it will perhaps be said that such cases could never 

 occur in a civilized community, as public opinion would 

 not allow the landowners to act in the manner indicated 

 even were they disposed to do so. I believe, however, it 

 may be shown that, under circumstances far worse than 

 those here supposed, the landowners in the most civilized 

 community on the globe do act in a very analogous 

 manner, and, moreover, are not yet condemned by public 

 opinion for doing so. Let us first, however, deduce from 

 such supposed cases as those above given a general prin- 

 ciple determining what articles of merchandise are and what 

 are not the proper subjects of free trade. A little con- 

 sideration will convince us that most animal or vegetable 

 products or manufactured articles, the production and 

 increase of which are almost unlimited in comparatively 

 short periods, are those whose free exchange is an unmixed 

 benefit to mankind; the reason being that such exchange 

 enriches both parties without impoverishing either, and by 

 leading to improved modes of cultivation and an increased 

 power of production, adds continually to the sustaining 



