places, and nothing can stop that natural tendency except unnatural laws to prohibit the importation of foreign food. It tends also to revert from a condition of high farming and large farms requiring much capital, to one in which small farms requiring less capital in money will be the rule. Land will no longer support two capitalists, the landlord and large farmer. If land is left to itself, its value for food-producing purposes will diminish owing to foreign competition, and the profits of landlord and tenant must decrease also, until a point is reached at which it can grow food in competition with other countries, or at which it will be worth less if used to produce beef, mutton, and bread, than if utilised in other ways. It will then be applied in whatever way will bring in the best returns in money value. Any law striving to prevent any commodity, land included, from disposing of itself in the most profitable manner, is destructive of the wealth of a nation, diminishes its food-purchasing power, and is contrary to natural laws, which, in spite of everything, will assert themselves. Any such attempt is in fact ordering by law that capital shall be employed in a particular manner in the United Kingdom, when it can be used much more profitably in the same way in other parts of the British Empire, or more profitably in other ways in the United Kingdom. Such a law would be protection of one industry as against others in its crudest and most objectionable shape. If it is desirable that wheat should be grown over the cultivable area of the United Kingdom, that result can only be brought about by making it pay better to grow wheat than anything else. As far as land is concerned, Radicals are worshipping false gods, for the manufacture of which Birmingham is so celebrated. Agriculture is failing, and they invite people to embark in it. They advocate buying in a market which is destined to fall. They would legislate to encourage or compel a man to grow wheat in one part of the British Empire, when he could grow twice as much at less cost in another part of the British Empire. The accumulation of land in the hands of a few individuals is an evil that should not be encouraged. Free trade in land is an excellent thing, and a truly Liberal doctrine. But the Radical doctrine that land should be forced, or encouraged, into uses to which it does not naturally find its way, is the very opposite of free trade in land. The Radical programme can never be carried out if land be left to itself free and unfettered; it necessitates coercion. And if carried out by means of false, unsound laws, it will fail unless supported by laws equally unsound and injurious. Protection would be necessary-a tax upon wheat heavy at present, and increasing as the producing power of other countries increases. If a low duty were placed upon food grown out of the British Empire for the purpose of diverting capital and emigration to the colonies, or if revenue was raised by low duties on wheat, agriculturists at home would benefit, but only to an inappreciable extent. Agriculture need not look for aid to protection, for that will never

be granted. All that can be done for land is to relieve it from the very unfair burden of taxation which at present weighs so heavily upon it, and then, with fair harvests and a reviving trade, agriculturists need not despair.

The

Reverting to the question of the depression in trade, we find a very different state of things. The cry of the agriculturist is that wheat cannot be grown without protection. The cry of the manufacturer is that protection is ruining him. All that he wants is liberty to sell at a natural competition price. The agriculturist has plenty of customers, but cannot produce what they want. The manufacturer can produce to any extent, but he has got no customers. Trade is uneasy, murmurs of reciprocity and retaliation are heard, wars of tariffs are spoken of, and the air is full of rumours of wars. The wagemen engaged in manufactures are asking what is to be done, and if matters do not speedily mend, they will wax impatient for an answer. battle must be fought, and it must be fought with new weapons. The brands that flashed so bright and struck so keen in the great fight between protection and free trade are useless now; for the question is not whether free trade or protection is best, but whether what we have got is free trade, and, if not, whether we can by any means obtain greater freedom. It is useless for the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to sit, like King Canute, defying the tide, and using rather strong language; the tide is rising in spite of him, and is already lapping round the feet of his ducal throne. In vain do the veterans of free trade flourish their forty-year-old mops; they cannot keep out the sea. Stronger barriers composed of arguments, not assertions, must be raised. New dykes made of living, solid facts, not dead, decaying hopes, must be thrown up to stem the flood, if stemmed it is to be. It is difficult to say what policy the Radical party will adopt on the trade question. Some members of the party are inclined to inquire whether something cannot be done to fight hostile tariffs with a more efficacious weapon than free trade. Others appear as disposed to adhere blindly to the letter of free trade towards manufactures, as they are prepared to go dead against the spirit of it in the matter of agriculture. The danger is that they may neglect the best chance we have of righting ourselves, which lies in the direction of the development of our colonial trade, and may endeavour to improve trade by some less efficient means. Reciprocity can only be brought about in one of two ways-either by abstaining from trade with a commercially hostile country, and starving her into submission, or by retaliatory tariffs. Retaliation is a clumsy weapon, inflicting injury upon both parties in the struggle, but in some cases it might prove effective. The question would be, which side could hold out the longest. In a war of tariffs with France, England would get the best of it, because the industries which would be affected there employ more people than those that would suffer here, and be

cause the burden would fall upon rich consumers in England, and upon poor consumers in France. We could afford to pay a high price for French wines, silks, laces, and gloves, or we could do without them. But our neighbours would suffer considerably if they were deprived of the cheap goods they import from us, or had to pay a greatly enhanced price for them. Still, retaliation is a most undesirable expedient.

I have no intention of entering into a lengthy discussion of trade questions, or of inquiring how far we can compete in the markets of protected nations; or whether we can compete in neutral markets with nations who are enabled to break down prices by selling goods at a loss for a time, recouping themselves by the enhanced price they obtain in their protected markets at home. Whether our present system is good or bad I will not argue; but I maintain that our present system, however good it may be, is not free trade. We cannot have free trade until other nations agree to exchange goods freely with us, and there is unfortunately no sign of their yielding in this respect. If we could induce our colonies to do so, as far as the necessity for raising revenue by customs duties would allow them, a great step would be taken in the right direction. If, by diverting the stream of emigration, we can increase the population of our colonies, we shall greatly gain, for the colonies are good customers. An increase of 5,000,000 in the population of Canada would be better for us than an addition of 50,000,000 to the inhabitants in the United States. Import duties for protection are bad, and unfortunately we are affected by the protection policy of other nations. We are suffering now from precisely the same causes that produced distress previous to the repeal of the corn laws; the difference being that agricultural produce was affected in those days by our protective duties, and manufacturing produce is affected in these days by the protective duties of other peoples. One of the great evils of the corn laws was that they caused violent fluctuations in the price of wheat, and one of the worst results of the protective system of foreign nations is that it produces sudden and great changes in the demand for our manufactured goods. The repeal of the corn laws reduced the average price of wheat only about four shillings a quarter-an inappreciable amount; but it steadied the market, and thus produced the most salutary effects. Human beings are not so formed as to be able to consume great quantities of bread when bread is cheap, and to go without food in years when food is dear; nor is prudence such a universal attribute of the English, or any other people, that they can be depended upon to guard themselves against the effects of bad trade, or dear food, by laying by every possible penny when wheat is cheap or trade brisk. In the United States, where the home market is strictly reserved or preserved, the native supply is ordinarily sufficient for the demand. If it tempora

rily exceeds demand, the overplus is thrust upon the Canadian, and to a certain extent upon the English market at very low prices, thereby causing a derangement which Canada hopes to remedy by adopting protection in self-defence, and which is inconvenient also to us. The great evil, however, arises when the demand is temporarily in excess of native supply, owing to the inability of manufacturers to keep exactly on a level with the requirements of a population rapidly increasing, and advancing in material wealth, not only rapidly as a rule, but occasionally by gigantic bounds. On such occasions a wave of American demand breaks over the rim of the United States and floods our markets for a short time, but, speedily retiring, leaves our employers and artisans high and dry and gasping for work. Nothing could be more unwholesome than these violent oscillations. The effect of British protection was to demoralise agriculture and the corn trade; the effect of foreign protection is to demoralise the cotton and iron trades and other industries. Free trade is the remedy in both cases; but while we were able to employ it in the former instance, we cannot employ it in the latter. It behoves us, therefore, to seek out some other cure. Either British manufactures must come down to the limit of the normal home demand, subject to depressions consequent on the occasional introduction of American goods at unnaturally low prices, and European produce artificially cheapened by bounties, and to the demand of a few savages, or it must secure a healthy, constant, or increasing demand on a much larger scale, by establishing free trade within the limits of the British Empire. Our markets can be steadied only by giving up the endeavour to retain our natural share in the trade of the world, and contenting ourselves with the trade of the British Islands or the trade of the British Empire. To secure the latter would be an enormous advantage to us. But we cannot expect to get everything for nothing. If the consumers of raw produce and producers of fabrics in the mother country are to be assisted by the colonies, the consumers of fabrics and producers of raw produce in the colonies must be assisted by the mother country. Whether turning the tide of emigration towards the colonies would be sufficient, or whether free trade within the empire can only be obtained by giving some slight advantage to colonial over foreign productions, is a very serious question, and one that merits full discussion.

All European nations are becoming more and more confirmed in their protectionist policy; and, though we are sometimes told that the United States are inclined to abandon protection, there is no foundation for the idea. Free trade in America denies the wisdom of duties for protection, but allows the levying of import duties for revenue, and we may be very sure that all American free traders would scout the idea of admitting bounty-fed articles duty-free. In England a man would be considered a lunatic, according to Mr. Bright, for holding doctrines the denial of which would stamp him

as a lunatic among Englishmen in Canada or in the United States. And yet Mr. Bright once said that Englishmen became wiser the further they were removed from their native land. The American and English ideas of free trade are very different; and yet the rumour that the Democratic party were in favour of even this modified form of free trade destroyed their chance of success in the election of 1880. If America divests herself of protective duties, she will do so gradually and carefully; and if she finds the air of free trade chilling to her factories, she will quickly put on her protective clothing again.

Experience shows that asking for free trade from foreign nations is about as profitable as crying for the moon. Our artisans are finding that out, and like sensible men they will give up crying for the moon, and will decide either to abandon the idea of free trade altogether, and be content with things as they are, or they will try and obtain free trade within the limits of the empire-an empire which fortunately produces everything that man can want. And here again the Radicals. are in fault. They do not set enough store by the colonies. Our colonies are not only our best customers, they are very nearly our only customers. We have exported comparatively little of late years elsewhere except our plant, coal and machinery; and if the colonies ceased to buy from us, the English nation would starve, or the world would see such a migration as has not occurred in modern times.

Our colonies can supply us with every kind of raw material, and we can return to them all manner of manufactured goods. With them we could be independent of all the world, and independence is a good thing for both men and nations. The future of England certainly depends upon her relationship with her colonies. She may remain the centre of a great empire, or become a small, scantily populated, and unimportant kingdom. The dream of the Radical appears to be to withdraw as much as possible from business, to disembarrass ourselves from all colonial responsibilities, and to retire within the limits of these islands, occupying ourselves with our own insular affairs, and settling down quietly to enjoy a green old age, feeding our bodies with the proceeds of our savings, and our minds with the memory that England once led the van in the cause of civilisation, peace, and civil and religious liberty. The dream is not an unpleasant one, but unfortunately it can never be fulfilled. England might gradually descend from the position of a first-rate power and a great and growing empire, into that of a small fifth-rate nation, tolerably prosperous, still doing a considerable trade and a very large banking business, provided that she could get some one to guarantee her existence, and the integrity of those possessions which are necessary for her trade. But no European power will guarantee England. Nobody has any interest in doing so except our own kith and kin beyond seas. The British Islands might not greatly tempt annexation; but British possessions will remain British as long