She did demand free trade. She demanded it in India by seizing a kingdom. She demanded it in China at the cannon's mouth. She got it.
She said to all peoples, "You may make corn, and cotton, and wool for us, and we will make everything you want cheaper than you can make it for yourselves, and happy you will be. We will make all the ships, will bring your corn, and cotton, and wool to us, and we will carry all our lovely manufactures to you, to the uttermost ends of the earth—at your cost. We will take toll of you both ways; we will make fair profit on your cotton, and on our manufactures, and that will be just and even, and we shall both be happy."
And so it has gone on for a hundred years, and gold has poured into England's stomach, a flowing stream, until her eyes stick out with fatness; she has even sought Turkish bonds for investment, and has lent much money to the good Khedive of Egypt—which she can't get back!
Let us look at England for a moment, as she is to-day. She has built magnificent temples dedicated to her great god all over England: at Birmingham and Manchester, at Glasgow and Paisley; at Birkenhead and Liverpool, at Preston and Salford, at Leeds and Nottingham—and where not? England has become a great workshop in which the god of trade is ministered to.
Her land? Yes, it is beautiful, but her yeoman have disappeared—all have been drawn into the maw of the manufacturing monster. Forty millions of people now has England, and only some seven per cent. of them raise the food they eat. And how do the rest get their food? It is quite simple: by selling to other nations the things they make, and bringing back the food which other nations make.
It has been the boast of England that she had a larger population to the square mile—389 human bodies—than any other land except one, and more great cities than any other land but the "far Cathay"—if even she be an exception.
That "inspired idiot" Goldsmith once sang in his pretty, sentimental way,
Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish or may fade;