repudiated the politico-economic ideas of Adam Smith; he has returned to them.
V.
At this point it is our business to examine in more detail and as fairly as may be the position of British trade under the present policy, and the prospect before us should that policy remain unchanged. For this purpose it will be well to follow the simple classification suggested by the Inquiry Blue-books, and to divide the markets of the world into three groups: (1) The chief protected countries, (2) the neutral countries, and (8) British Colonies and possessions. We shall see what has happened in the first group, and we shall also see that history must repeat itself in the other two, unless the country resorts, without undue delay, to a radical alteration of its fiscal system.
Free imports have permitted the most rapid and complete closing of the continental markets, where our trade in manufactures is declining; they must facilitate and encourage the closing of the neutral markets, where our trade is still increasing; and must lead to the loss of the colonial markets, which a generation ago were the least, as they are now the most, valuable of the three great groups, and where alone we have the opportunity of making our position secure for as long as there is any need to look. Had Cobdenism been less blindly followed and Adam Smith better studied, we should long since have had preferential arrangements with the Colonies. No Free Trade thinker, on the other hand, can deny that free imports in this country have enabled hostile tariffs abroad to develop with impunity. Free imports have been of the greatest practical disadvantage in the foreign and colonial spheres alike. An Imperial tariff would improve our position in all of them.
We proceed to obtain a more definite view of the cooperative movements of trade in the three great groups of markets. Adopting the classification of the Inquiry Blue-book, we find that the Board of Trade
