902 REPORT—1890. 
troversy. It is, that fifty years ago it might possibly have been not beyond the 
powers of human ingenuity to devise schemes of Protection which would, on the 
whole, be beneficial to America, at all events if one regarded only its economic and 
neglected its moral effects; but that the balance has turned strongly against Pro- 
tection long ago. In 1875 I visited America, discussed the Protective policy with 
several of its leading advocates, visited some of the factories in almost every first- 
class city, and compared as well as I could the condition of the workers there 
with that of similar workers at home; and lastly I walked up and down the streets 
and said to myself as I went, The adoption of Free Trade, so soon as its first dis- 
turbances were over, would strengthen this firm, and weaken that; and [ tried to 
strike a rough balance of the good and evil effects of such a change on the non- 
agricultural population. On the whole, it seemed to me the two were about equally 
balanced; and that those which would be likely to lose by the abandonment of 
Protection were not the higher, but rather the lower, classes of manufacturing 
industries: for instance. those metal and wood trades which give the best scope 
for the special genius of the native American artisan would gain by the change. 
Taking account, therefore, of the political corruption which necessarily results 
from struggles about the tariff in a democratic country, and taking account also 
of the interests of the agricultural classes, I settled in my own mind the question 
as to which I had kept an open mind till I went to America, and decided that, 
if an American, I should unhesitatingly vote for Free Trade. Since that time the 
advantages of Protection in America have steadily diminished, and those of Free 
Trade have increased; I can see no force in Professor Patten’s new defence of 
Protection as a permanent policy. I have already implied that I believe that many 
of those arguments that tell in favour of Protection as regards a new country, 
tell against it as regards an old one. Especially for England a Protective policy 
would, I believe, be an unmixed and grievous evil. 
§ 5. But this expression of my own opinion is a digression. My present purpose 
in discussing Protection is to argue that, if the earlier English economists had 
from the first studied the conditions of other countries more carefuily, and aban- 
doned those positions that were at.all weak, they could have retained the controversy 
with their opponents within those regions where they had a solid advantage. They 
would thus have got a more careful hearing when they claimed that, even though 
labour migrated more freely between the west and the east of America than 
between England and America, yet it was unwise to spend so much trouble on 
protecting the nascent industries of the Kast against those of England, and none on 
protecting the nascent industries of the West against those of the East; or, again, 
when they urged that, the younger an industry was, and the more deeply it needed 
help, the more exclusively would its claims have to stand on its own merits; while 
its older and sturdier brothers could supplement their arguments by a voting 
power which even the most honest politicians had to respect, and by a power of 
corruption which would tend to make politics dishonest. 
Had the English economists been more careful and more many-sided, they would 
have gradually built up a prestige for honesty and frankness, as well as for scientific 
thoroughness, which would have inclined the popular ear to their favour, even when 
their arguments were difficult to follow. Intellectual thoroughness and sincerity 
is its own reward; but it is also a prudent policy when the people at large have to 
he convinced of the advisability of a course of action against which such plausible 
fallacies can be urged as that ‘Protection increases the employment of domestic 
industries,’ or that ‘it is needed to enable a country in which the rate of wages is 
generally high to carry on trade with another in which it is generally low.’ The 
arguments by which such fallacies can be opposed have an almost mathematical 
cogency, and will convince, even against his will, anyone who is properly trained 
for such reasonings. But the real nature of foreign trade is so much disguised by 
the monetary transactions in which it is enveloped, that a clever sophist has a hun- 
dred opportunities of throwing dust in the eyes of ordinary people, and especially 
the working-classes, when urging the claims of Protection as affording a short eut 
to national prosperity; and, to crown all, he contrasts America’s prosperity with 
English prophecies of the ruin that Protection would bring on her. 
