competent remains, the emigration of a large part of our population every year may cease to be the blessing to this country it has hitherto been.

This is no wild, incoherent prophecy, dead though the Manchester school may be, and oblivious though we may have become of the most fundamental principles of political economy. Admit only that free trade will lower the cost of production, which protection has raised, and it will be evident to any one who will carefully consider the whole question, that every one of the changes foreshadowed must follow as a necessary consequence.

If it were not that we see so many indications that the country is deserting its old policy of freedom of trade and freedom of enterprise, we could look forward to the future with perfect equanimity. If our adoption of the principle of free trade has in the past led to most marvellous prosperity at home, which has reacted on every part of the world, and if so great an advance has been made by the action of a small country like England, what may we not expect from the same action in a country with the immense and varied resources of the United States, capable of supporting a population at least ten times as large as England? Even during our greatest prosperity we could not maintain the increased population which that prosperity produced, and, during all those years, millions emigrated to people America and other countries for whom we had no room at home. At least one half of our increase we had to send abroad to maintain our prosperity. Can we suppose that it will be no additional advantage to America and to us, no additional security to the permanence of worldwide prosperity, that, for far more years than we need look forward to, overpopulation there must be impossible; that every soul born in that country will be one more worker, one more customer for the trade of the civilized world, instead of being, as is so often the case here, a drag on the rest of the community which must be got rid of?

We should remember, however, that while America has so many advantages over us, we have at least one advantage

We are in pos

over her, and that a very important one. session; and, before she can wrest our present industrial supremacy from us, she must dislodge us from the position we now occupy. It must be years, it may be many years, before she can stand on as strong an industrial footing as we now hold. Time is in our favour; and if we are wise we can so fortify our position as to render it wellnigh impregnable. Those of us who are convinced free-traders do not believe in or care for exclusive commercial supremacy; the very phrase is a contradiction in terms, for trade is in its nature not exclusive but reciprocal. Further, we believe that Nature, if her laws are not interfered with by artificial restrictions imposed by the ignorance or folly of mankind, will give supremacy in the future, as she has always done in the past, to that part of the world, and to that nation, which, for the time being, can use it most for the benefit of the whole human race. We believe also that the most efficient and economical distribution of industry is that which takes place under free trade; and that, if from any cause we lose any of our more important industries, others, perhaps now unthought of, will spring up to take their places. We believe that every country and every nation will under freedom be guided to its true path of development, and can retrograde and become extinct only through its ignorance, its folly, or an overweening and ill-founded belief in its own greatness.

When, however, we look at home we are filled with misgivings. While we see America embarking on a course which, judging from our own experience, must lead her on to fortune, we see England rapidly retracing her steps. The whole air is redolent of protection, which now comes to us under many new disguises, most of them strangely enough described as reforms. This new school of self-styled reformers (I do not know if they also profess to be economists) has many and most wonderful panaceas for the improvement of mankind, for there is scarcely a measure proposed by them that is not a restriction of individual freedom. And yet the great fight of the old school of reformers was for freedom, not

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alone of trade, but for the individual freedom of every man to use the powers given him for his own advancement, well knowing that no man could improve his position without at the same time adding to the well-being, not only of his own nation, but of all humanity. The fight against governmental extravagance and the demand for retrenchment were scarcely even an extension of this principle. It was believed then that every man was entitled to the fruits of his labours, and that Government had not the right to ask him to contribute from these more than was absolutely requisite for carrying on that government with the strictest economy. We have changed all that now. Sir John Gorst and Mr. Arnold Morley appear to belong to the same school of political economists (if they will excuse my applying so mean an epithet as economist to gentlemen with such liberal ideas) for the one believes it does not matter how much a warship costs so long as the Government foots the bills, and the other considers that the market rate of wages is not the standard which ought to guide the Government or any other large employers of labour. Mr. Arnold Morley does not tell us what the new standard he has discovered is, but I presume it to be sentiment. I wonder if he ever remembers that there are many small employers of labour, who pay their wages out of their own pockets, and not out of the pockets of the taxpayers, who will be ruined by the introduction of his new standard, and that their ruin will entail ruin upon thousands of working men, every whit as deserving as his letter-carriers.

The occasion on which Mr. Arnold Morley delivered himself of this sentiment furnishes us with perhaps as good an example of the change which has come over us in recent years as can be found. A deputation of the unemployed, having nothing better to do, arranged to pass a part of their day with Mr. Arnold Morley. Instead of entering into their own woes, as he probably expected they would do, they read him a severe lecture on the duties of Government in general, and of the Postmaster-General in particular, towards those whom they employ. These gentlemen evidently belonged to the same school of political economists as Sir John Gorst and

Mr. Arnold Morley himself, for they shared their belief that the more money Government expends on wages, the more there will be for outside employers of labour to pay as wages to their workpeople, and the more with which to give employment to the unemployed themselves. If Mr. Arnold Morley will refer to the life of his most distinguished predecessor, the late Mr. Fawcett, he will find that, on a somewhat similar occasion, that gentleman laid down an exactly opposite rule; and Mr. Fawcett not only spoke with authority as a political economist, but he did more during his term of office, by affording the public greater facilities for the transmission of parcels, &c., to increase in a legitimate way the employment given to the working classes by the Post Office than any other Postmaster-General in our time.

Mr. Arthur Balfour tells us that the failure of Mr. Cobden's teaching is due to his having fought against the aristocratic and landed classes solely in the interest of the manufacturers. No doubt Mr. Cobden did oppose the landed classes, and the fight was a bitter one; but there was at least as much bitterness on the one side as on the other. It was that class which had imposed and maintained the disabilities under which all the other classes of the community suffered; and it was for the repeal of these disabilities, in the interest of all classes, that Cobden fought, and fought successfully. What is there in Mr. Cobden's life to show that he would not have fought as stoutly against the restriction of labour as he did against the restriction of trade; and that in doing so he would not have believed he was acting in the best interests of the working classes themselves? To the last hour of his life Mr. Bright remained unconvinced as to the advantage of factory legislation; and it suits those who are opposed to his views on that subject to point to this as a proof of the selfishness of the policy in furtherance of which he spent his life. But Mr. Bright's conduct in this, as in all else, was perfectly honest and consistent. He believed, not in helping or protecting people, but in teaching them to help and protect themselves. It is true he was a manufacturer; but, as such, he probably knew more of the working classes than most of

those opposed to him, and he knew that the conditions which gave rise to the cry for this special legislation would, if things had been left to work themselves out, have taken another form, and these people would have protected themselves, as responsible human beings ought to do, and can do, more effectually than any government can ever hope to do for them. In the last fifty years two men stand out conspicuously as the champions of the working classes, two men of blameless life and noble character, who spent their lives in the service of their fellow-men-Lord Shaftesbury and Mr. Bright. The one, a great nobleman, taught that it was the duty of the upper classes and of the Government to protect those whom he believed to be weak and incapable of helping themselves. I yield to no one in my admiration of the single-heartedness with which Lord Shaftesbury devoted a long life to the cause which he had at heart; but I am convinced that his action has been disastrous, and to none so much as the working classes, by teaching them to look for help elsewhere than to themselves. Mr. Bright, on the other hand, was a man of the people, who knew them well, and believed in them. He spent his life trying to awaken the working classes to a sense of their rights and responsibilities; and, having done that, he had no misgivings as to their being able to protect themselves. Mr. Bright's teaching has been, I believe, all for good; but then I belong to the extinct Manchester school.

Perhaps the best exposition of the policy of the new Liberal party is that presented to us by Mr. Chamberlain in his article in the Nineteenth Century of last November. Mr. Chamberlain says a few half-complimentary words over the grave of the Manchester school. It was useful in its day, he thinks, but its day is passed; and he then proceeds to introduce to his audience our old enemy protection in a number of new disguises, under the name of 'Constructive Legislation.' He enumerates some, possibly all the measures which he thinks may be advantageously passed for the amelioration of the condition of the working classes. There are two characteristics common to all these measures; they all require a great deal of money and the interference of