THE ETHICAL VIEW OF PROTECTION. 639 



taught by the theorists and by hard experience that free trade 

 pays in the long run better than protection, will buy of an Ameri- 

 can only as long as he can exchange his own goods, plus the duty 

 exacted by the tariff, for the American's goods, and still get them 

 lower than he can of anybody else. When the American can no 

 longer sell the goods the Englishman wants at a lower price 

 than that demanded by other people, the Englishman will go 

 elsewhere ; and if the American puts a tax on the Englishman's 

 goods, it is the same as charging more for his own goods, and 

 he is simply handicapping himself in what ought to be a free 

 race. 



When this happens — and it is sure to happen sooner or later, 

 because if a man, however strong, willfully handicaps himself in 

 a race, there is sure to be found in time a man who will beat him 

 — when this happens the producers of a protected community 

 have no longer any foreign demand to depend upon and the home 

 demand is not enough to take up the supply, because so many 

 practical men have been attracted into the protected community 

 and gone to producing, that more things are made than the com- 

 munity really desires. The community desires things that its 

 own members can not make, and to get them it must exchange 

 money, which represents labor in some form, at a ruinous dis- 

 advantage. The result of all this is, that the practical men who 

 have been producing things their own country does not want are de- 

 prived of patronage and are worse off than if they had never been 

 protected. If the family of which we were speaking a little way 

 back had been contented to live out in the country by themselves 

 in a simple way, they would have got on very well without the 

 rest of the world. They would have cut down trees and built a 

 cabin, made a clearing and planted corn and potatoes, hunted 

 game, clad themselves in the skins of animals, and existed entirely 

 independent of their fellow-men. But their wants were numerous, 

 they were forced to depend on others to supply them, and they 

 were obliged to exchange the products of their own labor with the 

 products of the labor of the rest of the world. 



We could go on multiplying examples, but we might end by 

 being statistical, and we must not forget the general principles 

 which were to govern our decision. It is clear enough now that 

 protection is a relic of barbarism; that it interferes with and 

 often interrupts the interchange of human activities; that it is 

 ruinous to justice, fraternity, and love ; that just as protection in 

 barbarous times, by means of strong walls and armor, put a pre- 

 mium on brute force and treachery, so protection iD these days, 

 by means of a commercial tariff, puts a premium on ignorance 

 and fraud. For these reasons we know that the world would 

 be better off without protection in any form, and we are bound 



