Читать книгу The British Jugernath: Free trade! Fair trade!! Reciprocity!!! Retaliation!!!! - Guilford L. Molesworth - Страница 7

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Well! well!! I have put off the evil day as long as possible; but sooner or later it must come out, even if you have not already guessed it.

Stoop low while I whisper in your ear the name by which this destructive fiend Jugernāth is known in England. It is:—

Free Trade!!!

Yes! it is Free trade that has utterly ruined Ireland; that is rapidly dragging England down under its wheels; that drains the lifeblood of India and England’s dependencies.

Free trade is that idol which England worships, but which brings in its train disaster, bankruptcy, pauperism, drunkenness, and crime. It is Free trade that is destroying England’s industries, and is driving her capital to protectionist countries. It is Free trade that, if not soon abandoned, will soon bring about a national bankruptcy in England.

My dear fellow! I know your stale arguments by heart. I have looked into your dishonest and fictitious statistics and discovered their imposture. I know you can make glib quotations from Adam Smith and Mill, and misapply them. It is easy for you to prate about Political Economy, and at the same time to practise Political Extravagance, of the most ruinous description; but I ask you to leave theory for a short time and look ugly facts straight in the face, divesting your mind, if you can, of all prejudice. These facts I will give you in the next chapter. But now don’t misunderstand me. I am not a rabid protectionist. I am not an advocate of Fair trade, Reciprocity, or Retaliation. I hold that Protection, if carried beyond its legitimate limits, is nearly as mischievous in its action as Free trade. And that although “Fair trade,” “Reciprocity” and “Retaliation” are cries that have been evoked by the evils that Free trade has brought upon us, yet they are wrong in practice, as an attempt at a compromise with an utterly false principle; and I am glad that the movement has collapsed.

I hold that Free trade is entirely wrong in principle and disastrous in results. Every argument of the free-trader is based on the misuse, not upon the proper use, of Protection.

Every so-called triumphant exposure of the evils caused by Protection has simply been an exposure of the evils of Protection carried beyond its legitimate limits.

The Corn Laws, to which Free trade owes its existence, were an instance of undue protection; they urgently required alteration, not repeal. Free trade advocates are unable to distinguish the difference between the use and the misuse of a principle. In their abhorrence of its misuse, they would sweep it away altogether. They are about as reasonable as the man who discovers that too much food will cause indigestion, and therefore proposes, as an infallible law of political economy, the dogma that no food whatever is to be taken. And they stigmatize as “simpletons without memory or logic,” as men “beyond the reach of argument”[1] those who decline to accept the Free trade gospel of starvation.