But the incident suggested to me two things specially; - firstly, the large number of individuals there are in all Christian communities who, like Mr. Hobson, are sincerely prepared to carry out the millennial ideals involved in their doctrines in the most thorough-going way, not only at their own expense but at that of their nation, even in things economical purely; and secondly, of how morally important it is that when they feel so, they should follow the example of Mr. Hobson and frankly and openly avow it. I am aware, of course, that besides the cosmopolitical standpoint which Mr. Hobson adopts in his defence of Free Trade, he has reinforced his position from purely national considerations as well; and that his opinion is, that although capital and labour would gradually and insensibly steal away from a country under a regime of Free Trade, as they were driven out of its open markets by the competition of foreign nations with superior natural resources, they would do so all the same, but even more promptly and inevitably, under a regime of Protection, owing to the waste of national resources and the consequent decline of effective economical fighting power which all tariff walls and obstructions involve.

Now, although I am as prepared to admit this as the most extreme Free Trader - indeed that is why I have contended that Free Trade would be best for the world as a whole if the world were a single political unity, - I nevertheless deny that at the present stage of the world's industrial development an absolute Free Trade would yield as great an aggregate of wealth for any nation as a judiciously regulated Protection, when the economic advantages and disadvantages of each are balanced against one another; - and in the following chapter I shall adduce the main considerations that have justified me in upholding this view.

But for the present, having in the foregoing chapters given reasons for rejecting the main contention of the orthodox economists, that a universal Free Trade that is for the best for the world as a whole is necessarily the best for each particular nation, it is necessary that I should call attention for a moment to the reasons which have driven Mr. Hobson and myself into opposite camps on this problem of Free Trade and Protection, in spite of our agreement on the central position; as they are important in throwing light on the profound effects on men's practical conclusions of any difference in their general attitude towards, or method of approach to, a speculative problem. Mr. Hobson comes to this problem mainly, as I have said, from the cosmopolitical point of view; I come to it mainly from the national one. He sees that Free Trade would be best economically for the world as a whole, if the problem were to be treated as a purely economic one; I agree, but deny that it would be best, even economically, for any nations but the few supreme ones (and so long only as they are supreme) at the present time, and assert, on the contrary, that it will only be best economically under the political conditions proper to the millennial time; and that, - as I shall presently give reasons for holding, - Protection is the best for nations, as separate individual nations, at the present time not only economically but politically.

And these differences, again, between us depend mainly, I think, on his having approached the subject primarily from the statical point of view, at once of an economic specialist and a moral idealist, whereas I have approached it from the dynamical point of view of a student of Civilization and Sociology working on evolutionary lines, and from the social, moral, political, and economic opportunism which is proper to this dynamic and evolutionary point of view. But as in the first chapter of this volume I have given reasons for believing that none of the special sciences dealing with humanity, - of which Political Economy is one, - can be approached with effect statically and from within themselves as it were, but must be approached dynamically and from the wider region of Sociology and Civilization lying beyond and outside them, I am of opinion that in spite of the rare powers of penetration and analysis which Mr. Hobson has brought to the science of Political Economy in general, and of this problem of Free Trade and Protection in particular, his view on this most important of all practical economic problems is erroneous.

With the above general observations on the moral importance of not mixing up antagonistic standpoints in discussions of this kind, but of keeping each rigidly to its own proper subject-matter, it is now incumbent on me to show cause why, from the standpoint of Evolution which is the one adopted in this work, Protection (with the exception already mentioned) is a better policy for the nations of the world in the present stage of civilization, than Free Trade.