And as for the workmen, with the mills and workshops closed, they have neither a living for the present nor for the future, - and so they too pass on to starvation or charity. And now, if we still further enlarge the area, number, complexity, and mobility of our industrial unit of comparison, and take, say, the South and East of England, - formerly the seat of her manufactures, - as against the Midlands and the North which through their rich natural resources in coal and iron drew away the manufactures of the South and East to themselves, - again the result is the same. Before the commercial conquest of the South by the North, you had agriculture plus the manufactures, which, with the transport facilities of the Thames, made the fortunes of London, and kept her permanently in her primacy as the metropolitan centre of the kingdom; after that conquest, the South and East of England went back to agriculture and sheepwalks again; while the Midlands and the North, had they been able to carry the metropolis with them before the population became so vast that for political reasons it could not be removed, would by this time have centred both the wealth and the population of the country within their own borders, and left the South and East as poor as the Ireland of to-day.

And now we come at last to the unit of comparison which brings the problem of Free Trade and Protection up for judgment on the purely economic question of the balance of profit and loss involved in Great Britain, as a single economic whole, losing on the one hand her great instruments of production one by one to the foreigner by trade competition, and the gain to her consumers on the other, by the greater cheapness of the corresponding products. In the face of what we have seen can we have any doubt of the result? Is not the fact that no statesman, be he Free Trader or Protectionist, can, as we have seen, be induced to put a direct tax on any instrument of production whatever, - neither on factories, nor mills, nor workshops, nor vineyards, nor horses and carts, nor any other form of fixed capital, - nor yet a poll tax on the workman; and moreover will think twice before he puts a direct tax on incomes, for fear lest it should hit parts of them that are being used to increase or replace instruments of production; while on the other hand, when taxes are necessary for revenue, he will ruthlessly sacrifice the mere cheapness to the consumer of any ordinary product wherever he can lay his hands on it - whether it be the old woman's tea, the working man's tobacco, or the consumptive expenditure of the capitalists on horses and carriages, and wines, fine houses, etc.; - and if he stays his devastating hand at sight of the 'big and little loaf' of bread, it is because of the portentous political importance attached to it, but never on merely economic grounds; - if all this be so, is it not of itself not only an argument but a proof of how the balance of profit-and-loss stands between losing an instrument of production on the one hand, and gaining a mere cheapness to the consumer of its product on the other? And is it not further a proof that men and statesmen really know where that balance lies, although by mixing up politics and economics together under the common category and denomination of 'economic principles,' they have benumbed their natural and instinctive penetration, and deadened it in the roar and hub-bub of political and party clamour?

For on the one hand, it is evident that before the foreign invasion, which by our hypothesis has lost us our instruments of production for the sake of cheapness to the consumer, - the assets of the nation were work and subsistence both for the present and for the future of the working population, plus profits and a living for the present and for the future of the capitalists who own these instruments of production; while on the other hand, after the invasion has carried off these instruments to foreign lands, there can be neither work nor a living either for the present or the future, for either the capitalists or the working men. And with result what? - emigration, the workhouse, starvation, and the political loss to the country of its independence, dignity, and power among the nations as well. Now, when I say that all men and statesmen whether Free Traders or Protectionists instinctively know the economic difference between destroying an instrument of production for the sake of the cheapness of its products, and retaining it at all hazards (as is seen in their anxiety not to tax it), I would expressly exclude all those who have allowed the general abstractions of the academic doctrine of Free Trade in which they have been brought up, to override their natural intuitions.

And the reason of this, I think, is largely the fact that in the background of their minds is always the idea that there are certain things which in any event can be counted on, somehow or other, always to put everything right. First, that there is always some other industry requiring different instruments of production to which a nation can turn when the old ones are lost; secondly, that many minor instruments of production are but subsidiary means, - mere raw material, as it were, - for the really great instruments of production concerned in the manufacture of the finished article, and so ought logically to be placed, like foreign cotton, under the economic category of raw material, rather than under that of genuine instruments of production: and thirdly, that whatever befalls, they can always fall back on that comforting doctrine of the orthodox economists that there is always a common reservoir of economic wealth and power in the world, which if you will only keep your gates and sluices open by Free Trade, will by its to-and-fro movement of exports and imports, keep this wealth going on for ever, evenly and impartially distributing its benefits over all nations alike.