Mr. Syme also says:—
“In Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, the party of progress has always been identified with a restrictive commercial policy, while the conservatives are the most uncompromising of free traders. Indeed, it may be said, that one-half of the entire English-speaking race are, in one shape or another, in favour of a restrictionist policy, and of this half the great majority are advanced liberals.”[36]
Free trade was an assertion on the part of labourers as consumers; the protectionist policy of America and Australia is the attempt of the same class to obtain privileges as producers. The working men in those countries are possessed by the thorough belief that, by carrying out their policy, they benefit all. Free trade considered that the interests of consumers suffered by protection; the Americans and Australians, with their eyes open, undergo these private inconveniences because they believe the mass of the community is better off thereby. To use the words of an intelligent American:
“We all recognize that a protection tariff forces us to pay for many articles slightly more than they would probably cost us under a system of free trade. We know too that at first our manufactured products, whether of metal, cotton or coal, cost us in general more to make at home than they would have cost us if imported freely from abroad. We know that we are not buying in the cheapest market, but we believe, on the whole, it is best to impose upon ourselves the voluntary tax[37] for the great ends, not of enriching Monopolists, but of promoting the best interest of the nation.”
The average American is neither a fool, nor a knave. To fanciful theories, whose value is problematical, he prefers the solid assurance of experience and fact.
The cause of this apparently inconsistent action on the part of the working classes is easily explained. Free trade was a political job,[38] and the working classes were enlisted, by politicians, into a crusade against their own interests, to assist in the overthrow of those classes which supported the political opponents of the Free-Trading rulers.
For this purpose the working classes were stirred up to class antagonism, and the Free-Traders have kept up the delusion by dishonestly claiming as the work of free trade every advantage which protectionist countries have shared in common with us.
History is repeating itself in the delusion against which poor old Æsop warned us centuries ago by his fable of the “Members and the Belly.”
The members (manufacturing hands) hounded on by Bright and Co. to class antagonism against the belly (the agricultural classes) who were represented as “squandering national wealth,” have now brought England to a pretty pass. The reaction is taking place. Poor old Æsop was, as a political economist, more far-seeing than Mr. Bright; who now, however, seems to be changing his views in the most marvellous manner, for he has at last recognised that the manufacturing interests are affected by the agricultural depression. For he says:—