benefit might be conferred. But, we know from experience that this is most unlikely to happen; and that when once Protection has been admitted into a commercial system it becomes the most difficult thing in the world to get rid of it. Then, with regard to the contingency of war, how different are the views of the school of which I speak from those held by that association to which I have the honour to belong—the Cobden Club! While the school referred to seems to be always contemplating and preparing for the contingency of war by means of hostile tariffs, we are striving might and main to render war impossible, by preaching our commercial gospel of peace!
As you are all aware, Great Britain stands alone among the nations as a free-trading country. It is natural to inquire how this is the case, how it is that people, acute, thoughtful, and intelligent, as, for instance, the French, the Germans, and the Americans, cling to the doctrines of Protection, while we alone adhere to those of Free Trade? A full answer to that question, gentlemen, would occupy more time than we have at command this evening. I must content myself with just indicating the direction in which I believe the causes of this phenomenon are to be traced. I cannot help thinking that most of the evil is to be laid to the account of wars. Their cost necessitates the imposition of heavy taxation. The persons who impose that taxation are for the most part ignorant of political economy. They take the first impost that occurs to them, and they lay it on the people they misgovern. They know nothing of the possible consequences, in an economic point of view, of what they do. One of these consequences is the creation of interests which would never have existed but for this cause, which grow up, and which gradually acquire sufficient influence and power to render it extremely difficult to get rid of them. This difficulty I hold to be the great economic problem of the immediate future.
At the present moment we may see these causes in operation in France, Germany, and the United States; what is taking place there affording apt illustrations. We ourselves have suffered in times past from these causes, but
