Publisher's Synopsis
From the INTRODUCTION.
THE wealth of a country, it has been well said, is "the value of what it produces." Production, therefore, is the basis of national prosperity. In all discussion of questions affecting or related to the material condition of the people-their industries, their earnings, and their savings-this primary and fundamental fact must be borne in mind.
The first indictment, of a popular nature, of Free Trade, and especially of one-sided and partial Free Trade, is, that it imperils and sacrifices national production by the favoured introduction of universal and unreciprocated external competition. There is no possible escape from condemnation on this head for a system which displaces domestic labour by foreign, and reduces to a dangerous and destructive degree the security and remuneration of industrial capital. No one can now deny that this is the result of our present system of free import of competing foreign productions of land and labour, alongside of the successful maintenance of their protective system by foreign States, and their exhausting revenue tariffs upon most of what they permit into their markets of British and Irish production.
It is usual, however, for the professional advocates of the Free Trade policy of this country to attempt to justify it, not so much by any defence, or direct apology for it, on its essential merits, as by inferences in its favour derived from a misrepresentation of the policy of Protection. The most systematic and audacious misrepresentation of facts, and the most persistent falsification of history, are now the sole basis for popular belief in it or patience with it. The Corn Law controversy is falsely described and disposed of. The temporary and artificial prosperity of this country during the years of our monopoly of the improved tools of production and distribution, and during those years when other great nations were engaged in exhausting wars-is all ascribed to the Free Trade policy; and any attempt or proposal to revert to fiscal regulation of external trade is falsely described as limiting the supply of needful commodities, and attempting to create a monopoly for landlords. There is, therefore, no scientific defence offered or possible for the present fiscal policy of Great Britain, but a very unscientific and senseless fetish worship is set up in place of critical investigation and fair discussion.
A second popular indictment of our so-called Free Trade policy is, that it separates and places in antagonism to each other those elements of the commonwealth which nature and history have determined to have a common interest. It declares that the consumer's interest is paramount and opposed to that of the producer; that labour has separate interests from the capital which employs it, that one branch of industry in the country has no interest in the prosperity of any, and of every other, which is equally possible and natural, and that town and country have mainly antagonistic interests. There is here a great field of ethical and philosophical discussion and review of the Individualism of Free Trade as opposed to the Socialism of Protection, and several chapters of this book will be devoted to this most interesting side of the question.
