170 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



The essence of free trade is its mutuality. Its especial 

 value depends upon the almost self-evident proposition, 

 that, if each country freely produces that which it can pro- 

 duce best and cheapest, and exchanges its surplus for the 

 similarly produced product 's of other countries, all will derive 

 benefit. As an argument against the old policy of bounties 

 and monopolies and prohibitory import duties, and the 

 idea that it was best for a country to produce everything 

 for itself and be independent of all its neighbours, this 

 was irresistible, and it did good work in its day. But 

 people were so impressed with its self-evident common- 

 sense (which it yet took them so many years of hard 

 struggle to force upon a reluctant and conservative popu- 

 lation) that having once got it, they set it up on high 

 and worshipped it, as if it were a moral truth, instead of a 

 mere maxim of expediency calculated to produce certain 

 economical effects if properly carried out. They have thus 

 been led to overlook two important aspects of the question, 

 which must be carefully studied and acted upon if we are 

 to obtain the full benefits to be derived from free trade. 

 The one is, that, even if universally adopted that is, if 

 no artificial restrictions were imposed by any nation on the 

 trade of any other nation with it there are yet many 

 conceivable cases in which its full application would 

 produce injurious results, morally, physically, and in- 

 tellectually, which might so overbalance the mere com- 

 mercial advantages it would bestow, as to justify a people 

 in voluntarily declining to act up to the principles it 

 enunciates. The other is, that even the commercial 

 advantages depend on the whole programme of free trade 

 being carried out, and that if the first half of it is 

 neglected that is, if each country does not freely produce 

 that which it can naturally produce best and cheapest 

 then it may be demonstrated that one entire section of 

 the benefits derivable from free trade, and perhaps the 

 most important section for the real well-being of a nation, 

 is destroyed. These two points are of such importance 

 that they deserve to be carefully considered. 



