IV. (1)

And there are other elements of comedy in the Protectionist question. A professor of economics at a great American University said to me, “In America there is not a single professor who is not a Free Trader, but you see how little effect Edition: current; Page: [ix] our teaching has on Congress or the Government.” In England a manifesto in which Mr. Chamberlain’s proposals are confronted with economic truth has been signed by most of the professors in the subject. In Germany, to avoid any such conflict, Schmoller, in his inaugural address as Rector of Berlin University, ordered any professor who set the authority of Adam Smith above that of the Imperial rescripts of 1880 and 1890 to resign his chair. In France, M. Méline threatened professors who thought it their duty to teach the truth with the rigours of the law; but he has never taken up my challenge to him to formulate the doctrines which they are to teach. Indeed, Protectionists so seldom define what they mean by Protection, that I must borrow from a Protectionist journal published in Philadelphia—The American, of August 7, 1884: “The object of a protective duty is to divert a portion of the labour and capital of the population out of its natural channels into those favoured or created by the law.” That is, the aim of Protection is to substitute the will of the Government for that of the individual in the direction of his private affairs, by granting privileges to industries favoured by powerful influence at the expense of the unprivileged and those which only ask for freedom.