Canada would almost certainly withdraw the clause under which our trade, formerly sinking from year to year, has recovered and doubled in value. This result would not be, as many Free Traders in this country seem to imagine, an act of unnecessary and unreasonable resentment. The exports of the Dominion, because of the preference extended to the Mother Country, are penalised in the German market, and enjoy no compensating advantage in our own. Under these conditions, preference which is unquestionably even now an asset to ourselves, worth as much as our whole export to Russia, becomes dead loss to the Colonies, and they cannot be expected to continue it. Not one of Mr. Chamberlain's critics seems to have adequately recognised the strength of his position; the reality of the problem which must always be a serious danger to the Empire if it remains unsolved, and cannot be solved at all unless as he would solve it; the supreme moral courage shown by the popular politician who deliberately · asks democracy to tax its own food; and the much that there is of greatness in the man. There can be no rational doubt that Mr. Chamberlain's scheme means the making or breaking of the Empire. But he is convinced that if his proposals, with all their risks, are thought impossible, the alternative will be the more ignoble dissolution of decay. If he asks the country to break up the foundations of its whole national system, it is because he thinks we rest on false ground, and can rebuild on concrete. The Liberal caricatures still labour to convey the impression that Mr. Chamberlain is not a serious person. They could make no greater mistake at the outset of this business. The Continental caricatures were nearer than that. He is so serious a person that he has done more to shake the position of Free Trade in six weeks than it would have seemed possible before the Birmingham speech for any man to do in a decade.

There will be prejudice and bitterness enough at a later phase of the controversy, for it is idle to hope that a struggle of interests and ideals involving all that Englishmen can think worth caring for in politics, and their whole outlook upon life can be settled without a conflict of bitter and fierce passions. This crisis does not wholly depend upon a changed reading of commercial conditions. It depends as largely upon a changed view of human nature, and of the laws of national self-preservation in the modern world-even more wonderful and opulent in many respects than the early Free Trade Radicals could have anticipated, but showing in other respects an appalling contrast to their idealistic dreams of the picture of civilisation at the opening of the twentieth century. In one word, the coming struggle will be as much a sequel of Darwinism as of Cobdenism. It will be, to a large extent, the revolt of a whole generation which desires to shake off alto

gether the dead hand of traditional Radicalism, and wishes to frame its own world to its own ideas. But while the atmosphere is still clear and cool it would be well if the two sides to the controversy could make a serious effort to understand each other.

Those who are wedded to the old Free Trade theories accuse their opponents of being influenced by the old Protectionist fallacies. They say to each other that the work of education will have to be done all over again. They entirely mistake the matter. There is little in the arguments of half a century ago upon either side that can much influence the contentions of to-day. We can see, indeed, that in respect of prophecy, Cobden was the sophist and Mr. Disraeli was the real seer. The former prophesied that within a limit of five years free imports in this country would mean universal Free Trade. The latter warned the country that free imports on this side would mean more hostile tariffs elsewhere. Cobden trusted to moral example to secure reciprocity. Disraeli maintained that we should trust to nothing but treaty. Again it is difficult for a modern man to read with patience the denunciation of landlords which fills Cobden's speeches. Much of it amounts to demagogic clap-trap of the most inflammatory kind. He was a lover of England in spite of all, and for immedate purposes a great benefactor of her people, but it would have been well, in the long run, even for the causes he had at heart, if he and his class could have realised that the value of agriculture was not wholly measurable by money, and that when the ruin of agriculture was accomplished, England might not always find herself absolutely certain of being able to sell cotton for corn.

It is impossible not to be struck by this lack of social and international vision in the speeches of the early Free Traders. But let us admit that for the world as they saw it, they were economically right. As between a manufacturing island and her agricultural world, it must have seemed sun-clear that free exchange was the ideal system. Not only so, but in default of real Free Trade it must have seemed equally clear that free imports were the next advantage. So long as that condition lasted, which was until after the American Civil War, and the Franco-German War, wealth was amassed, comfort was diffused, and our export trade was developed with unparalleled rapidity. Take the following table of exports and total trade :—

The value of Free Trade in the days when there was no competition needed no elaborate demonstration to any one who was not an agricultural person. But look at the abrupt contrast shown by the reverse of the medal, since the industrial awakening of Europe and America in the early 'seventies:

No reasonable Free Trader comparing the two tables can avoid admitting that the truth of his doctrine under present circumstances is almost infinitely less obvious than it was under former circumstances. "Free importers," to borrow the Duke of Devonshire's phrase, may still be confident in the fundamental soundness of their doctrine, but the evidence of the Statistical Abstract since 1872, that is since the period when foreign competition began, is terribly against them. Our population in the interval has increased by thirty per cent. The world's consuming power has enormously developed. Under these circumstances, upon Mr. Cobden's theory, we should have exchanged a continually and largely increasing volume of manufactures for our mass of Free Imports. But there was no increase corresponding to the mere growth of our population. There was no increase corresponding to the expansion of the world's demand. There was no increase corresponding to the progress of any of our chief Protectionist competitors. Apart from coal, there was, until last year, no increase at all in years of maximum trade over the high water mark of 1872. By contrast, compare the figures for part of the period given in Sir A. E. Bateman's invaluable "Board of Trade Memorandum on the Comparative Statistics of Population, Industry and Commerce in the United Kingdom and some leading foreign countries":

MANUFACTURED EXPORTS (FOUR COUNTRIES).
United Kingdom.

France.

Germany.

United States.

If these figures are to be taken in evidence, the case would seem disquieting enough upon its face. But it is in reality far more significant than it appears at first sight. The Cobden Club will maintain that, after all, our exports in 1902 broke, for the first time in thirty years, the record of 1872, and surpassed the figures for 1900 a fact showing a degree of elasticity to which we had long been unused. Yes, but modest as is the late increase by comparison with German or French figures in manufactured articles, what is the reason for it? Mr. Chamberlain would point out, and every mind determined to think honestly must mark the fact, that the increase of trade with Canada, under the Preference Clause, and with South Africa, has concealed the decline in extra Imperial markets.

Three Years' Exports of British Produce.

1902. £174,395,000

94,379,000

104,788,000

109,028,000

7,605,000

7,785,000

10,345,000

12,758,000

24,436,000

17,153,000

The Colonies alone are keeping up our trade returns, and postponing the reaction which would have given Mr. Chamberlain a much better electoral opportunity. But even this is not all, and the bearing of the next table of figures is extremely important to the argument:-

DECLINE IN EXPORTS (MINUS COAL AND SHIPS) TO FOREIGN MARKETS, AND INCREASE IN EXPORTS (MINUS COAL AND SHIPS) TO BRITISH POSSESSIONS.1

Nothing could be much more startling than the contrast between the previous growth of trade in manufactured articles shown in the second column, and the unmistakable evidence of gradual but steady decay shown in the third. In 1900, the last maximum year, we sold to all the world outside the British Empire manufactures to the value of £15,000,000 less than in 1890, and over £32,000,000 less than in 1872. If Free Traders do not see in these figures facts to be met, Lord Goschen will not be among (1) Deductions, 1872-1894, for coal exports are estimated, though closely enough to make the comparison scrupulously fair. Deductions, 1896-1902, are exact.

them, should these pages fall under his notice. In his speech in the House of Lords, apparently little imagining that the evidence he demanded could be without difficulty produced, he went near the root of the matter, though not quite to the root, in the following admission:

"It is the slackening of the exports which has mainly attracted the attention of those who fear for our industries and our commerce. It is that, I think, which attracted the attention of the Prime Minister. But before we go to what that decline is to be attributed to, and whether or not it is to be attributed to the hostile barriers abroad, we have yet to ask ourselves the question whether our exports have only diminished to the countries where there are high tariffs, or whether they have also diminished to those countries where there is fair trade all round, such, for instance, as China and Japan, and where we compete on equal terms with all the other nations. If it could be proved that the slackening of our exports was due simply to those countries that have raised high tariffs against us, some step in the proof which the Fair Traders desire would have been given." If it could be proved? But it can be most strictly proved. Our exports have not diminished, to answer Lord Goschen's question, where there is fair trade all round. Again excluding coal (estimated, but still with care rather to understate than to exaggerate the case against Free Trade), and also excluding the export of new ships, which has been important in the case of Japan, the following table shows how British trade has held its own in the neutral markets of Asia, Africa, and South America :

TOTAL EXPORTS TO NEUTRAL MARKETS, ASIATIC, AFRICAN AND SOUTH AMERICAN.

This is a record of slow but real progress on the whole in what may be summed up as the coloured and South American markets, where we are upon general Tariff equality with our competitors.

If Lord Goschen desires to know where the connection between hostile Tariffs and the decline of British trade is exhibited, he may see it shown with convincing force in another and a last table-the most instructive of all by far. It has been seen that the increase of our exports to British Colonies and possessions by leaps and bounds has saved the whole situation for British commerce in the era of foreign competition. It has served the less