7. And lastly, we have to ask to what extent the protective tariffs imposed by nations as defences against each other, are calculated to forward or handicap ultimately any particular nation which, like England, stands fast by Free Trade, and keeps her banner flying in her contest with her rivals for the neutral markets of the world?

The above questions having elicited the main facts in the history of the particular case for which the Statesman is called on to prescribe, we have now to consider the still more important problem of the general principle with which we are to approach the subject, and the general rules for its treatment. As for our method of approach, then, we must discard the principle of the old physicians of fifty years ago, who with their bleeding and calomel went on the idea that what was good in a general way for all, must be, in the same general way, to the advantage of each in particular; and on the contrary consider it as proved and established that what is best economically for the world conceived as a single economic unity or whole, is not necessarily the best for each particular nation in it. And we must further insist that the problem of Political Economy is not how the wealth of the world as a whole is to be best increased, but how the wealth of a particular nation in trade relations with other politically independent nations, is to be best increased - quite a different problem.

And if these premises are granted (and unless they are, indeed, the problem is solved, and the economic Statesman, like the quack doctor with his single pill or prescription, baa only to go blindly and unflinchingly straight ahead with his Free Trade), it follows that the business concerns of nations must be handled precisely like the business concerns of individual traders in competition with others in the same nation. And if this, too, be granted, we may perhaps be allowed to summarise a few of the main principles of treatment as follows: -

1. Always to keep in your own hands as a nation all the instruments of production you possibly can, as each of these, be it remembered, whether it be a piece of land or a steam engine, gives its immense wealth-producing services as a free gift over and above the expense of cultivating it, making it, or keeping it in repair; and never to let considerations of mere cheapness seduce you from this fixed rule, except in the case of those complementary products, as we have called them, which your own country has neither the climate, the soil, the natural resources, nor the skill, for producing with any measure of success; otherwise, like a red Indian who should sell his only rifle to his enemy for a bottle of rum, or like a foolish workman who for the sake of a slightly cheaper dinner each day should be induced to part with his tools one by one until they were all gone, you would find to your chagrin that you had sold your birthright for a mess of pottage. And in laying down this important principle I am not without precedent, for Adam Smith himself, as we may remember, when he preached Free Trade for all nations, did so avowedly on the ground that (in his time) it could be done not only with impunity but with advantage to all concerned, and without sacrificing a single one of the great instruments of production, whether of the land or of manufactures, - -excepting only the silk manufactures.

2. Never to forget that in order to work these powers of Nature - imprisoned in the soil, in machinery, and chemical processes - to their fullest capacity and at the lowest cost, the extent of the market you can command for them is the one supremely important consideration. And to get this market, it is necessary that you should so mass, concentrate, and combine all these instruments of production by every political or economic device in your power, as, - like Napoleon in war. or the great combinations and Trusts of the present day, - to be able to bring a greater economic force (in the shape of cheapness) to bear on each point of attack, than your rivals can command; and so, on the political principle of 'divide et impera,' defeat them one after another in detail. And indeed until the nations insist that their ethics of trade shall be on a level with their religious, ethics, this is both necessary and inevitable; for to imagine that any individual trader is likely to offer himself up as a sacrifice to this (at best) ethically low ideal of mere money-getting, and for reward get kicked into the gutter of poverty for his pains, while the nation itself, which alone can and ought to remedy it, goes smiling by, is and ought to be a dream.

3. But as those more complex products of manufactures which are likely to win for themselves in open competition a world-market, are often made up of many auxiliary and subordinate processes or parts, whose materials, - raw or half manufactured, - have to be drawn from collateral subordinate trades, and often from distant countries, it is necessary that as many of these trades as can be acquired by a nation should when once acquired be held as tenaciously as territories conquered in war, and not be lightly bartered away for mere cheapness, - whether through foreign 'dumping' on its shores or otherwise, - but only under the sternest necessity; so that if the nation is forced to let one or other of them go for the sake of mere cheapness, to let it be done frankly as a sacrifice, - and not, as the Free Traders so often regard it, as an occasion for jubilation.