xi RECIPROCITY THE ESSENCE OF FREE TRADE 183 



changed ; for such arguments have always been put aside 

 as irrelevant when free-trade principles have been at 

 issue. 



To the fourth objection, that our reciprocal duties would 

 be evaded by passing goods through countries where they 

 were allowed free entry, I reply, that the duty might be 

 levied on each article as being the product of a certain 

 country, from whatever port it was shipped to us. In most 

 cases our custom-house experts would at once be able to 

 say where the article was manufactured, and we might 

 further protect ourselves by requiring satisfactory proof 

 (such as a certificate from the manufacturer) that it was 

 really the product of the country from whose port it was 

 shipped, in order to be admitted duty-free. Even if we 

 should be occasionally cheated, I cannot see that this is a 

 valid objection against adopting a sound and beneficial 

 course of action. 



A FEW WORDS IN REPLY TO MR. LowE. 1 



Although the subject of "Reciprocity" is not yet of 

 sufficient popular interest to be the subject of another 

 article in the Nineteenth Century, I beg to be allowed to 

 say a few words in reply to Mr. Lowe's very forcible, not 

 to say violent and contemptuous, article. 



I have often been at once amused and disgusted at a 

 common practice in the House of Commons, of flatly deny- 

 ing facts which a previous speaker had alleged as being 

 undisputed, or had proved on good evidence ; but I hardly 

 expected that, in an article deliberately written and 

 published, so eminent a politician as Mr. Lowe would 

 condescend to similar tactics, and attempt to overthrow an 

 adversary by the mere force of his weighty ipse dixit. 

 Yet the most important part of his reply to me, that which 

 he thinks " so complete and absolute that I am convinced, 

 had it occurred to Mr. Wallace, his article would never 



1 This reply is printed here because no other criticism than 

 Mr. Lowe's has ever appeared, and because it well illustrates the 

 methods so often adopted by the popular advocates of free trade. 



