And why, or for what? For a series of abstract propositions and so-called laws of Political Economy, not one of which, as we have seen, has the slightest validity. For they are not, be it observed, like, say, the law of gravitation, which envisages in a single formula and rounds in by a single generalisation a range of concrete facts to all of which it gives that absolute scientific predicability on which men can walk with certainty, but are of that order to which, as we have seen, the abstractions of the perpetual-motion schemer and the Achilles-and-tortoise logician belong. Now in saying this, I am neither attempting to be satirical nor merely metaphorical; but, as we shall presently see, am simply giving expression to a literal scientific fact. We have already seen it illustrated in the views of Adam Smith on the Colonial trade of his time; and the modern Free Traders, although transported into an entirely different atmosphere and environment from that of Adam Smith, still carry with them to the solution of the problems of to-day the same abstractions and illusions.

And nowhere is this better seen than in their two great lines of argument, the one bearing on the relation-between exports and imports; the other, on the functions of gold, and the mechanism of the Foreign Exchanges, in the trade between nations. It is not so much their formal logic that is at fault - on the contrary all their positions hang together by a kind of natural affiliation - it is rather to what they leave out of their calculations that their errors are due; just as the fallacies of the perpetual motion schemer lay not in his formal logic, but in leaving out of his calculation the element of friction. Indeed, in all the arguments which the Free Traders advance in support of their doctrine, both in what they ignore and on what they lay stress, it is always the same element that is left out; and hence, as we shall now see, their illusions are not merely analogous to those of the perpetual-motion schemer, but, when regard is had to the different nature of their subject-matter, practically identical with them.

Bat to see this clearly, it is necessary first of all to separate the different varieties of argument employed, before we can generalise them as modes of some single error common to them all.

Now as the subject-matter of the problem of Free Trade or Protection concerns entirely the exports and imports of nations in trade relations with one another, the first thing we have to notice is, that the Free Traders always ignore the various motor powers which keep this inter-trade a-going, and fix their eyes exclusively on the mere to-and-fro of the interplay itself; - as if in looking at a locomotive in motion, they should keep their eyes fixed on the to-and-fro movements of the piston, without considering whether the coal with which it is stoked is running low or not; or as if a man looking at a clock should watch only the backward and forward movement of the pendulum, without thinking of whether it would soon require winding up or not. In other words, the Free Traders always ignore the relative strengths of the instruments of production of the particular trading nations whose out-flow and in-flow of exports and imports they are called upon to consider, and concentrate their attention only on the interplay of their gross products; and if they find on calculation that these exports and imports combined keep up to the average in their gross amount, or even go on increasing, then, like the man who keeps his eye on the piston, and forgets about the coal, or the perpetual-motion schemer who finds after a few inspections that his machine is still going about as usual, they generalise their impressions, and announce as a dogma that this inter-trade must go on - for ever! Now that I am not doing; the Free Traders any injustice in accusing them of this initial and fatal absurdity, will be seen in every one of the considerations which I am now about to place before the reader.

To begin with, it is seen in every turn of the arguments they use in their most familiar conversation, and in none more than in that unfortunate phrase of Sir Robert Peel's which they pass over to you quite unsuspiciously, as if it were indeed a genuine coin they were offering you, - instead of being one of the rankest and most unblushing of counterfeits; - 'Take care of your imports, and your exports will take care of themselves.' Indeed had I no other argument at my back, I should be prepared to stake the whole future of Free Trade or Protection as a principle of commerce on the implications of this single phrase; for in it, as in the primal sin of Adam, all the other fallacies of the presentation of the Free Traders in their multiplex forms and ever deepening absurdities, down to the perpetual motion scheme itself which is involved in their academic argument on the Foreign Exchanges, are virtually contained. By what hocus-pocus in being passed from hand to hand so unblushing a counterfeit could ever have obtained currency in a great nation, unless indeed, like the 'Emperor's clothes' in the fairy tale, it were by hypnotic suggestion alone, passes all comprehension.

For consider it; - Here are the oceans of the world covered with ships of merchandise passing and repassing each other everywhere, but instead of going equally to all lands and continents indifferently, they are seen concentrating themselves both in number and character, and in a graduated hierarchy, which varies little from year to year but markedly from decade to decade, in certain favoured regions - chiefly around the ports of England; in lesser number around the ports of the Continental nations, the Colonies, and the countries of the East; fewer still around Norway and Denmark; still fewer around the harbours of Spain and Portugal, Italy, Asia Minor, and the North of Africa (all of them, be it remembered, once so crowded); until we reach Labrador, Greenland, Patagonia, and other regions which, although lying little further afield than some of the most crowded, are yet passed by with only an occasional visit to their shores, or with none at all. And when we ask what is the cause of these strange preferences and aversions by which one shore is crowded with suitors, another accorded only a nodding or friendly acquaintance, and others shunned and avoided altogether, the natural answer is, because the first, England, is rich in natural resources, - in mines, cornfields, manufactures, transport facilities, railways, canals, horses and waggons, shipping, etc., and in skilled workmen and labourers - which under the general term instruments of production, or fixed capital, constitute as we have seen her abiding income and source of wealth; and it is the sale of the products of these instruments to foreign nations, or in other words the sale of her exports, that is the cause both of the number of ships that are continually leaving her shores carrying them to the places at which they have to be delivered, and of the ships that are bringing back goods from these foreign countries in payment of them.