NOT ONLY A PROTECTIONIST PAMPHLET.
One ground of complaint Mr. Williams may possibly feel that he has against me—that I have so far treated his book as if it were only a Protectionist pamphlet. My excuse is that the spirit of the Protectionist breathes in almost every page he has written. Nowhere does he show the slightest grasp of the central fact that all commerce must be mutual, that exports cannot exist unless there are imports to pay for them; everywhere he speaks as if each useful commodity sent us from abroad were a net loss to the British nation, and as if the people who sent it were “robbing” us of our wealth. Nor is that all. I take his chapter dealing with the reasons “why Germany beats us,” and I find that after examining some half dozen reasons in succession and dismissing them as unimportant, he comes to Protection and exclaims, “Here at last, we are on firm ground.” Again, in his next chapter he specifies “Fair Trade” as the first of the “things that we must do to be saved.” The second is the commercial federation of the Empire. I think, therefore, that I have had good reason for concentrating my argument on these two points.