But that is not the game which is played by one nation politically independent, with other nations equally so; and the game not being the same, neither are its rules.

For now the economic as well as the political problem is, - how the particular nation is to draw to itself (by any means not outside the international code) as much wealth as possible from other nations, how, in a word, to aggrandize itself at the other nation's expense - quite a different question. It is the difference between a game like football or cricket where, whatever rank the different members of the team may hold in relation to each other, they all, after preliminary competitive trials of strength to test their efficiency, act in concert as one man, and so are all complementary to each other; and a game like gladiatorial shows, boxing, billiards, etc., where the competitors weed each other out down to the last man, and where each when beaten in the single combat, - unless he can reinstate himself by new methods or additional training, - is henceforward, so far as the sporting world is concerned, in position, dignity, and general estimation, defunct.

Our next proviso is, that the political elements of the problem shall be kept separate from the purely economic, until, that is to Bay, the economic have been settled; - such elements, for example, as what to do with any part of the population that has been thrown out of work by trade dislocations: what to do with the industrial incapables of all kinds from whatever cause arising, personal or economic; how to effect a more equitable distribution of the products of labour by legislation, as by a minimum wage, the taxation of 'unearned increments,' or what not; how far to sacrifice part of the possible national income for the purpose of providing food and necessaries at the cheapest possible rate for the poorest classes of consumers - the congested slum-dwellers, the moral and physical wrecks, the profligates, and the 'ne'er-do-weels,' - as well as for the genuine unemployed; how to arrange for the defence of the country in considering the question of population; and so on. All these belong to the domain of Politics, and although in every State which forms a political unity or nation they must at every time and always take precedence over purely economic considerations, they must never be mixed and confounded with them under a common category, and labelled as 'economic principles '; for until the political and economic constituents are clearly separated out in thought, and their respective effects on national well-being distinguished, no solution of any great problem involving both political and economic elements is possible.

And nowhere can a better instance of this be seen than in that afforded by this very problem of Free Trade verms Protection, as conducted in the ordinary course of newspaper and magazine discussion, where chips and snippets of politics and economics combined are served out to the reader from day to day with but little attempt to separate them from one another. And indeed, we may venture to predict that until editors of newspapers and magazines will consent to give more ample space to the full scientific discussion of all the cardinal positions in turn on which the solution hinges than they have hitherto thought it necessary to do; and having first convinced themselves, will keep their readers to these cardinal issues until they are convinced also; - although the public, as members of one or the other political party, will continue to record their votes, still the subject will be tossed about to and fro like a carcase on the top of the waves, and no one will ever be convinced, in the proper sense of that term; in the sense, that is to say, in which men are convinced, for example, that the earth goes round the sun, and not the opposite, first, by the scientific demonstrations of the mathematicians and astronomers, then by the acceptance of this demonstration at each step by the intelligent minority competent to follow it, and lastly, the acceptance in turn of this consensus by the vast body of the uninstructed who know nothing about it either way, and to whose natural impressions it would be a stumbling block.

Indeed it was by this process that the belief in Free Trade was originally established; but now that the conditions of Industry on which Adam Smith quite naturally based his conclusions have been so completely reversed that none of his arguments apply, - so much so, indeed, that, as we have seen, they are rejected one and all by the modern Free Trader himself, - the same process of conviction must be gone through again, if the nation is to be as firm in its belief, one way or the other, as it was for fifty years in its belief in Free Trade. Nothing has served to impress this more on my mind than the receipt while writing this chapter of a long and elaborate document on Free Trade by the accepted Parliamentary candidate for this constituency. It was an out-and-out defence of Free Trade from beginning to end, and dealt exhaustively with all the usual aspects of the subject as they appear in the newspaper and platform discussions. I read it over carefully, and was surprised to find that when I had finished it, there was scarcely anything in the facts, statistic-. turns of the argument, or even in the formal deductions drawn from them, to which I was seriously inclined to object, - except indeed the conclusion itself! And yet here am I engaged in writing an elaborate vindication of the principle of Protection both on political and economic grounds! Now what is the explanation of this apparently illogical attitude of mine \ Simply this, that the writer had cunningly all along mixed his Politics with his Economics in such a manner, that as in a mixture of brandy and mineral water, he was constantly attributing the effects of the brandy to the mineral water, and of the mineral water to the brandy, without knowing it; and to the equal confounding of both! And so, like a skilful circus rider, passing lightly from one foot to the other, now on to the political horse, now on to the economic one, while professing, and indeed believing, all the time that it was the pure principles of Economics alone that he was expounding, he swept triumphantly around, taking all the hurdles and paper hoops in turn with ease, and after each of them pausing to challenge the homage of his opponent and the world in general on his skill, until he reached the end of his course; but teaching me, for one, that no great and complex subject, any more than a sleight-of-hand exhibition, can ever be other than a tissue of fallacies, until each of its elements and their respective effects have been accurately separated out and analyzed to the bottom, - and in none is this more necessary than in this problem of Protection or Free Trade.