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a 
TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 1145 
our knowledge of markets, and with the habits of those who have been bred up to 
be our customers.’ He would learn that there was ‘no reason to believe that,’ in 
the ‘absence of disturbing causes,’ we should ever lose our present command ot 
the world’s market ; that we might have preserved our superiority for centuries ; 
but that ‘if these difficulties were once surmounted, this superiority—so far at 
least as respects the commodity in which we find ourselves undersold—would he 
gone for ever,’ in consequence of ‘ the well-known law of manufacturing industry 
that, ceterts paribus, with every increase of the quantity produced, the relative cost 
of production is diminished.’ It cannot be denied that a consideration of this law, 
and of the vis irertie here attributed to an established superiority in manufactures 
and commerce, supplies an important qualification of the general argument for Free- 
trade. For, along with the tendency of industry to go where it can be most 
economically carried on, we have also to recognise a tendency for it to stay and 
develop where it has been once planted ; and the advantage of leaving this latter 
tendency undisturbed would naturally be less clear to the patriotic foreigner than 
to the patriotic Englishman. The proclamation of a free race for all, just when 
England had a start which she might probably keep ‘for centuries, would not 
seem to him a manifest realisation of eternal justice; to delay the race for a 
generation or two, and meanwhile to apply judiciously ‘ disturbing causes’ in the 
form of protective duties, would seem likely to secure a fairer start for other 
nations, and ultimately, therefore, a better organisation of the world’s industry 
even from a cosmopolitan point of view. 
Nor would it seem to him a conclusive argument against this course that pro- 
tective duties impose great present pecuniary sacrifices on the protecting nation; 
especially when he learnt, from an impartial English source, of the great sacrifices 
which private capitalists in England were in the habit of making to assist the 
tendency of free competition in their favour. He would find, for instance, in the 
Report of a Commission published in 1854,' an appeal to the working classes to 
consider ‘the immense losses which their employers voluntarily incur in bad times, 
in order to destroy foreign competition, and to gain and keep possession of foreign 
markets.’ Should the efforts ot Trade-Unionists, urges the writer, be successful for 
any length of time, they would interfere with the ‘ great accumulations of capital 
which enable a few of the most wealthy capitalists to overwhelm all foreign com- 
petition in times of great depression,’ and which thus constitute ‘the great instru- 
ments of warfare against the competing capital of foreign countries.’ If it was the 
view of shrewd English men of business that these great sacrifices of private wealth 
were needed, and were worth making, to maintain the industrial start once gained, 
the intelligent foreigner would naturally conclude that the other combatants in the 
industrial battle must be prepared to make corresponding sacrifices; that each 
nation must fight with its own weapons; and that where there were no great 
accumulations of capital in private hands, the instruments of warfare must be 
obtained by a general contribution. 
I have given these considerations, not because I agree with the practical con- 
clusion which they tend to support, but because I think that they require to be 
met by a line of argument different from that which English economists have 
usually adopted. I think it erroneous to maintain, on the ordinary economic 
grounds, that temporary Protection must always be detrimental to the protecting 
country, even if it were carried out by a perfectly wise and strong Government, 
able to resist all influences of sinister and sectarian interests, and to act solely for 
the good of the nation. The decisive argument against it is rather the political 
consideration that no actual Government is competent for this difficult and delicate 
task ; that Protection, as actually applied under the play of political forces, is sure 
to foster many weak industries that have no chance of living without artificial 
support, and to hamper industries that might thrive independently, by the artificial 
dearness of some of their materials and instruments ; so that it turns out a danger-~ 
ous and clumsy, as well as a costly, instrument of industrial competition, and is 
1 See p. 20 of Report by Mr. H. 8. Tremenheere, Commissioner appointed to 
inquire into the operation of Act 5 & 6 Vict. c. 99, and into the state of the popn- 
lation in the mining districts (Vol. XIX. of Parl. Papers for 1854). 
