TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 225 



law of capital, that the concurrent apparatus of trade is great in proportion to the 

 aggregative or wholesale tendencies of a country's indu'tiy, and that every coun- 

 try's capital is substantially this apparatus of its trading. 



To enable any country to attain the condition of relatively large capital, its 

 industry must be left as free as possible to take those aggregative forms into which 

 it is ever naturally impelled by the greater productive results, or, in plainer lan- 

 guage, by the larger profits. But here the realities of things present constant 

 obstacles, which keep, and possibly ever will keep, some countries poor in capital 

 and others rich, although we cannot doubt that each and all would prefer to be 

 countries of large means. Even granting that the industrial tendencies and spirit of 

 enterprise are equal and alike in the more advanced coimtries, a proposition, how- 

 ever, which we hardly dare affirm, yet in various other respects those forms of 

 trading which result in a large capital, are checked and thwarted by the countries 

 themselves, now by their revenue necessities requiring import duties with their 

 trade-restrictive effect, and again by the prejudices and en-ors of those coimtries in 

 misdirecting industry by making these duties protective of home industry. To 

 foster home industry at the expense of foreign trade is to restrict the aggregative 

 tendencies of industry, and concurrently, as we have seen, to reduce the require- 

 ment or capacity of a country for capital. To "protect" the home industry in 

 addition, is to impoverish the country in its productive power. There is thus the 

 double disadvantage of a diminished productive power, and a reduced amount of 

 that concm-rent balance on hand that is regulated more or less by the form of the 

 trading. 



The author has not encumbered his argument with the consideration of what is 

 called "fixed capital." He has hitherto been treating of "floating capital," while 

 a country's capital consists of both. The fixed portion is less amenable to the law 

 indicated than the other kind ; but inasmuch as the amounts that are ever passing 

 into fixed capital, that is, into permanent investments, depend mainly on the effec- 

 tiveness of industiy in supphdng the means, and as this depends on the aggregative 

 and wholesale tendencies, the connexion of all capital is thus more or less direct 

 with the law iu question. 



In all the foregoing the question is treated on purely business principles, and 

 society regarded as one individual interest, which makes more or less of income at 

 the year's end, and has more or less of concurrent capital all along, according to the 

 form of trading. The social question is of course different, and it takes society to 

 pieces to ascertain how its many individual components fare comparatively under these 

 trading forms. The author did not go into this latter question further than to acknow- 

 ledge that the social by no means follows always the merely economic well-being. 

 Nevertheless it is of the very highest importance that the economic laws be clearly 

 imderstood, and that in withstanding their natural tendency, or, in plainer words, in 

 resisting more or less the course of free trade, a country is accepting a positive mate- 

 rial disadvantage as the concurrent price or penalty of whatever it is aiming at 

 socially. When the judgment is thus enlightened protective intervention will 

 always be the very rare exception, and only under the strictest and most special 

 discrimination as to what is protected. This would be altogether a difierent pro- 

 cedure from that blind and indiscriminate protective system with which so many 

 countries still injure themselves, alike by reducing their industrial power and 

 diminishing that concurrent capital requirement or capacity, which keeps a country 

 full-handed in resom'ces. 



MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 



Address hi) Professor FLEE3JI^'■G Jkxkin", F.R.S., President of the Section. 



I^ADIKS AND Gentlemen", — -In addressing you on the subject of mechanical 

 science in our ancient university, I propose to speak oa the somewhat threadbare 

 topic of technical instruction. The panic with wliich some persons regarded the 

 1871. 15 



