VI.

One cannot insist too often on the greatness of the work done by England in 1846, when, in basing her Fiscal Policy on science, she brought it into harmony, instead of contradiction, with industrial progress, and thus acquired a start of half a century over other nations. As a result her condition was that of a man in good health whose organs perform their functions without his being aware of it: she became so thoroughly adapted to the benefits of Free Trade as to be hardly conscious of them. It was not until Mr. Chamberlain and his friends threatened her with amputation and mutilation that she realised the advantages of that healthy economic life in which economic competition is not replaced by the lobbying and back-stairs intrigues, the coalitions of corrupt vested interests, the pressure of trusts and cartels, characteristic of political competition.

Truths once acquired cannot be lost: there are abuses whose recurrence experience has made impossible. Edition: current; Page: [xi] Neither Bismarck nor Méline nor the agrarian party in any country has been able to return to the system of prohibition and taxes on raw materials existing before 1860.

In the following pages the absurdity of certain Protectionist propositions will be demonstrated. The insufficiency of the diet of the French population is shown by a comparison with that of the army. I am waiting for some Protectionist to get out of this argument for Free Trade by proposing to reduce the soldier’s ration. In 1904 the value of a ton of French exports was about £17 3s., of imports £7 15s. Taking the value of a ton of imports as £100, that of exports is £253. The cheaper we buy, the greater our marginal benefit on selling dear. Protection, by raising the price of imports, tries to reduce this margin; no Protectionist can disprove this. The effects of sugar legislation justifies the remark of The Economist, “France and Germany have the sugar industry, England gets the sugar.”

I wrote a book called “The Sugar Question in 1901.” On March 5, 1902, the Brussels Convention was signed, proving once more the truth of William of Orange’s remark, “One must not wait to hope to undertake.”