THE question we have to answer, then, in this chapter is: - why, on a burning subject like that of Free Trade and Protection, which not only divides the practice of the world into two hostile camps but its theory as well, the positions on which the Protectionists lay so much stress, as being of the most vital importance to the solution of the problem, are regarded by the professional Economists of the Free Trade school as of so little consequence one way or another, that they almost refuse to discuss them? The problem, - in so far as it is a purely economic one, - is concerned entirely with the exports and imports of a country and the relations between them; and therefore one would naturally suppose that everything connected with these exports and imports would be of living interest and importance, especially as the essence of the problem is not how this or that nation has prospered up to the present under Free Trade or Protection respectively, but whether, on a close inspection of the exports and imports, any indications are to be detected of the reversal of that prosperity in the future; precisely as the problem of the practical physician is to discover by a minute examination of organs and symptoms, not how healthy a man has been up to the present, but whether there are within him any seeds of disease which are likely to imperil his health.

But the Free Traders, as we have already seen, have spent most of their time in demonstrating that the exports and imports of a country must balance each other when all the suppressed items on both sides have been set down in the national ledger. Whether these exports and imports take the form of goods or of gold, of foreign loans or private credits, the cancelling of old debts, or fresh borrowings and the creation of new ones, the rendering of services not entered in the Board of Trade returns, the passage of bills of exchange, or what not, they must balance each other or trade would cease. But beyond this simple arithmetical proposition, the only facts which the Free Traders regard as of any importance in their bearing on the problem are; - whether the exports and imports combined keep up to their normal average or show a reasonable increase in proportion to the increase of population, and whether the Income-tax returns also keep up a corresponding average or increase. And when we find Free Traders, - who are as much concerned for the future of their patient, the nation, as the most noisy or fussy of Protectionists, - obstinately refusing to lay any stress on any other sign or symptom than the immediate state of their patient's pulse, and denying the necessity of making diligent search as to whether any other sign or germ of incipient disease is present which may have a bearing on his future condition, we are obliged, were it only out of scientific curiosity, to ask how it can be.

For the orthodox system of Political Economy which is the text book and scripture of the Free Trader, and from which he has directly received his ideas, professes to be in its essentials a completed science, water-tight and logic-proof at all points; and if it ignores as unimportant all that the great body of Protectionists in the world regard as fundamentally important, it must be, one cannot help thinking, for some reason which seems sound and all sufficient. If, therefore, we could only find out the reason why nothing else matters in the discussion of the problem of Free Trade and Protection but the present amount of exports and imports combined, and throw the limelight on that reason for a moment, we should get one stage at least nearer the prospect of some reconciliation in theory, or compromise in practice, between these two opposing economic camps and creeds. In all other sciences and philosophies, things are regarded as of no practical importance, firstly, when they are considered insoluble and beyond the reach of the merely human mind, - as for example in Theology and Philosophy, the co-existence and interaction of good and evil, of free will and necessity, of God and the Devil, or what not; secondly, when the science is confessedly imperfect, and has not as yet fathomed the deeper arcana of its subject-matter, and so has to suspend its judgment, - as for example, in Biology the problem of the co-existence in the same species of opposite sexes, or in Physics, the co-existence in the same unit of matter of attractive and repulsive forces; and so on.

But that Political Economy - which professes to be a complete science - should in this special problem of Free Trade and Protection which deals with exports and imports solely, regard as of no importance and as not worth considering, such apparently important particulars as whether it is our own instruments of production, as seen in our exports, or other nations' instruments of production, as seen in our imports from them, that are in question; whether these imports are complementary, as of the exchange of corn for manufactured goods, or competitive, as of engines against engines; whether the exports are the products of unique and inalienable resources, as of gold or diamond mines, special qualities of coal or clay, special artistic skill, and the like, or only of natural resources either moderate in amount or of a quality common to those of many other nations as well; whether they consist of highly finished products, as of cotton, silk, or wool, or of raw materials and half finished goods only; whether these highly finished exports, again, draw their raw materials from distant lands and alien nationalities, as in the case of cotton, or are inherent in the soil and mines at home; whether the country is equally richly equipped in all the collateral processes necessary to a great organic industry, or only in a few processes, having to depend on foreigners for the rest; whether the exports are of household articles in universal demand, as of food, clothing, utensils, iron and steel for railways, machinery, buildings, etc.,. or such as command small and scattered markets only, with little room for expansion: whether there are alternative employments open to the nation in the event of the capture of those on which it has hitherto been accustomed to depend, or whether the ring of possible industries to which recourse may be had is either practically closed, or is insignificant either in number or in the range of its operations; whether the exports on which a nation is relying are gaining or losing ground in those great organic industries which are rooted in the soil and in the hereditary skill of its operatives, or whether the nation is making up for its loss in these by a number of low class industries which can be carried on equally well by other nations, and which only keep their foothold by hanging on to the skirts of the still great but declining ones, and so must go when they go; whether a Free Trade nation relies for its permanent economic prosperity on being able to overleap the tariff barriers of other nations, or only on keeping its hold over neutral ones, or on being able by some 'favoured nation clause' to slip through the interstices left open by the protected ones in their trade competitions with each other; whether it conquers by its own industrial strength, like a lion, or makes up for its weakness by living on 'dumpings,' scraps, and leavings, like a jackal; whether the nation in question keeps up the volume of its imports by the number and strength of its instruments of production actually engaged in business, (and whose products pay for them), or, like a trader who is gradually losing his business but keeps up his accustomed style of living, in the hope of something ultimately turning up to repair his fortunes - partly by present earnings, and partly by its past savings, or, if the savings are large, partly by the compound Interest on that part of them which it does not consume and which is continually being reinvested - in a word, whether it is living on actual industrial operations, bringing in, say, twenty per cent profit, or like a part pensioner, on active business and savings combined, or like a full pensioner, on a three or four per cent interest only; and so on; - when we find, I say, that the Free Traders regard all these things as matters of indifference, it must give us pause, and demand our most serious consideration.