They reject also, as being an infraction of their abstract ideal, his doctrine of the protection of 'infant industries,' - a measure which Mill also grudgingly allowed as a temporary expedient whereby the superior natural resources of young countries should have time given them to make good their footing in the world. They reject also, and on the same ground, Adam Smith's support of government subsidies to railways, canals, etc., which have a future in them for the benefit of the nation, but the risks attending which are often so great as not to justify private individuals in sinking their capital in them. They reject also, as savouring of Protection, all those 'drawbacks' which were common in his time, and which he would still allow in the shipping trade for the purpose of opening up new markets in those distant countries not already covered by the Colonial monopoly. And finally, - owing to the laissez-faire doctrine with which the Free Trade doctrine is bound up, - they reject, in principle at least, all emoluments, subsidies, or helps whatever to anything and everything however noble in itself, or for the ultimate greatness of the country, which cannot either by private enterprise or by voluntary contributions collect sufficient funds to sustain itself - whether it be for scientific research, for the furtherance of the best trade processes or methods, for the detection of adulterations operating to the detriment of great masses of the people, for the advancement of the higher ranges of knowledge, or for any purely national interest that cannot be voluntarily carried on the shoulders of individuals.

All these, however, are merely negative attitudes, which being mingled as they are with political considerations, the present Free Traders may regard as properly falling outside the bare bones of their meagre economic specialism.

But Adam Smith's positive arguments in defence of Free Trade on its purely economic side, they reject in toto as well. And this is just what we should have known must be the case. For between the time of Adam Smith and the era of full-blown Free Trade on which England has entered since the repeal of the Corn Laws, the entire organization of the industry of the world had been so revolutionized by mechanical invention, facilities of transport, railway communication, the development of international credit, and what not, that if we may figure it as having a separate life of its own, like an animal, it can no longer be regarded as of the same species; it has now no longer, as I have said, the simple organization of a worm, but rather that of the higher vertebrates. For if we consider it, in the time of Adam Smith, each nation was practically a self-contained unit, and the transport between them being by long sea voyages, nothing but the most durable commodities, of the smallest bulk, or of the most special excellence, could get a foothold for successful competition with the home trades of other countries in the same line of goods.

Gold, of course, could find a market everywhere, so could French silks or wines, so too English manufactured goods, American cotton, sugar, or tobacco, by reason either of their unusual cheapness, - as was the case with English goods, - or of their limitation to particular countries only.

Adam Smith, then, it will be remembered denied that the Agriculture of England could ever seriously suffer from foreign competition, even if the Corn Laws of his time had been abolished; and this he did, first, on the ground that the cost of growing corn was practically about the same in all countries, and secondly, because of the great difficulty and cost of transport, - a difficulty and a cost which were, of course, increased in proportion to the distance of the competing countries from each other; while as for cattle, owing to the expense of feeding them on the way competition except in the case of the most rare and valuable breeds was almost nil. Agriculture, then, which in his opinion was the greatest of all wealth-producing assets for each nation, could never, he thought, be seriously endangered by foreign competition even under a universal regime of pure Free Trade; and as the manufactures of his time were mainly 'cottage industries,' the products of hand-loom and other primitive machinery (for the steam engine was not yet invented) and were intended mainly for home consumption, - except in certain favoured instances like English cutlery, French silks, etc., - they could, he fully believed, have nothing to fear from Free Trade. And as in these highly specialised manufactures themselves, each the product of a different country, nobody had ever denied that being complementary and not competitive products, the freest possible exchange, unhampered by tariff barriers, would be best economically for both parties to the trade, it followed that with the wines and silks of France exchanging freely for the cutlery of England, the spices of the East for the manufactures of the West, the fruits of the South for the corn of the North, Free Trade would, economically speaking, be from every point of view of the utmost benefit to all nations, without seriously endangering through competition the special wealth-producing powers and instruments of production of any, - and could therefore be entered upon by all alike at once and without fear.

Now, if we ask what the modern Free Traders would say to these arguments of Adam Smith in favour of Free Trade, can there be any doubt that however fully they agree with him in the principle of Free Trade they would feel obliged to reject each and every one of them? They would simply laugh at his doctrine that Agriculture is a more productive source of wealth to nations than Manufactures or the Foreign Trade; for in the present day, owing to steam, electricity, and mechanical invention, one nation will have ten times the powers of Nature locked up in its minerals that it has in its agricultural land; another in its ships; another in its manufactures, and so on; and as for England, the increase from her land is not, and could not be, under the highest and most intensive cultivation, a tithe of what it is from her manufactures, her minerals, and her shipping trade. If this be not so, why should the modern Free Trader as vigorously defend the decay of her agriculture in favour of her manufactures, as Adam Smith, from his arguments, would have condemned it? In fact, for any particular nation having trade relations with other nations, mere agricultural land as such may be left out of consideration, except in those few instances where it still continues to be the main wealth-producing asset.